This is a question to fellow researchers living in countries where English is studied as an additional or foreign language (EFL). Theories proposed by Ehri and Rosental (2007) as well as Perfetti and Hart (2001) - the lexical quality hypothesis, suggest that knowledge of the spelling of words strengthen the memory trace of those words, facilitating automatic word recognition and contributing to in-depth vocabulary acquisition. These theories are usually applied to first language contexts. In Israel, EFL instruction usually takes place starting from third grade and students study between 3-5 lessons a week. English spelling is a challenge for most students. First language Hebrew and Arabic speakers mention the challenges of English spelling as adults. I wonder what the situation is in other countries. How is English spelling taught in different countries? Is English spelling taught explicitly in countries where English is a foreign or additional language? What are the challenges in the acquisition process?
EFL and ESL both the approaches are used in India where learners are always multilingual in nature and practice. The spellings are taught and learnt sometimes through phonetics and related methods. But most of the learners are non-native and spellings are learnt through rot learning instead of communicative learning.
The problem of English spelling is its irregularity; I mean the lack of correspondence between letters and sounds. I think there is no better alternative than teaching the learners to extensively memorize the available patterns of spelling and testing them via dictation and cloze tests. Extensive reading and practice help to automate the acquisition and use of the spelling patterns.
We have embarked upon a program to teach orthographic conventions to teachers and teacher educators. I recently published a paper on a short term intervention with ninth grade EFL students (about 14 years old) - one group of stronger learners and one group of weaker learners. I taught mini-lessons of about 15 minutes each, whereby the students were introduced to the orthographic convention (e.g., as in the word ). The students and I provided additional examples of words with this convention. Posttest results were most encouraging. These foreign language students reported how they had never studied the regularities of English orthography and how this knowledge assisted them with pronunciation, reading accuracy, spelling and expressive writing. Clearly, this kind of teaching and learning requires that EFL teachers will have this content knowledge. In my undergraduate and graduate classes, this is content that I teach and discuss.
I teach undergraduates in a teacher education program in Poland. Polish has a shallower orthography than English and young learners (from grade 1, aged 7) have difficulty with decoding skills. I have found that my students are not aware of rules of English spelling and conventions and so are not able to systematically support their learners in school. I am now beginning to teach decoding in the undergraduate teacher edcuation program, particularly of how to read (and so write) dipthongs such as ou, au etc as these are a major source of difficulty in school. I would be interested to learn more about how you do this Janina.
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