EDITORIAL published: 10 June 2021 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700604 Editorial: Spelling Across Orthographies Teresa Limpo 1*, Naymé Salas 2 , Marie Van Reybroeck 3 and São Luís Castro 1 1 Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, 2 Departament de Didàctica de la Llengua i la Literatura, i de les Ciències Socials, Facultat de Ciències de l’Educació, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 3 Delilab, Psychological Sciences Research Institute (IPSY), UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Keywords: spelling, misspelling analysis, morphology, cross-language comparisons, handwriting Editorial on the Research Topic Spelling Across Orthographies The ability to spell words correctly is a cornerstone of literacy. Despite the substantial amount of research into this process, a large part of the empirical findings come from English-speaking populations. Given the distinctive features of the varying orthographic systems worldwide, more research into spelling across orthographies seems warranted. To stimulate this was the main goal of this Research Topic, which contains two review plus 14 research articles tapping 11 orthographies (viz., Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, Hebrew, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, and Welsh), from first graders to undergraduates. These articles were organized into three sections focusing on (1) the type of misspellings produced, (2) the role of non-phonological knowledge in spelling, and (3) the view of spelling as a basic writing process. Together, the findings from the studies included in the Research Topic showed that the type of misspellings produced is influenced by writing systems, writers’ characteristics, and spelling tasks; that morphological, orthographic, morpho-orthographic, and syntactical knowledge are important sources of information to produce accurate spellings in varying orthographic systems; and that spelling is a fundamental writing process intertwined with handwriting. In sum, this Research Topic provides an up-to-date view on Edited and reviewed by: Angela Jocelyn Fawcett, spelling across orthographies, which will contribute to increase our understanding of this process Swansea University, United Kingdom and instigate further research into it. *Correspondence: Teresa Limpo EDITORIAL ON THE RESEARCH TOPIC: SPELLING ACROSS tlimpo@fpce.up.pt ORTHOGRAPHIES Specialty section: Spelling—or the retrieval, assembling, and selection of orthographic symbols—is a fundamental This article was submitted to process underlying reading and writing (Graham and Santangelo, 2014). Reflecting the central Educational Psychology, role of spelling in literacy, a large body of works having spelling as its central object of study a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology has been built (Treiman, 2017). Still, the majority of conclusions emerging from this research is grounded on findings from English-speaking populations. Notwithstanding the importance of Received: 26 April 2021 those results, a deeper understanding of spelling acquisition and development calls for a broader Accepted: 12 May 2021 Published: 10 June 2021 approach, capable of supporting inferences on the similarities and differences across orthographies. This acknowledgment was the motivating force to set up this collection of articles. Citation: Limpo T, Salas N, Van Reybroeck M This Research Topic contains two review articles plus 14 articles reporting empirical studies, and Castro SL (2021) Editorial: which targeted spelling across 11 orthographies (viz., Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, Spelling Across Orthographies. Hebrew, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, and Welsh). Together, these studies covered a large Front. Psychol. 12:700604. age span, from first-grade school children to undergraduate students. Articles are organized into doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700604 three sections: section The Informative Nature of Misspellings looks into the type of misspellings Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 June 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 700604 Limpo et al. Editorial: Spelling Across Orthographies produced by children and adolescents across orthographies and all grades, with visual-orthographic spelling errors accounting tasks; section Non-phonological Sources of Knowledge explores for over one quarter of these. This category of errors was the non-phonological knowledge sources involved in spelling ranked the second most frequent one, below violations of spelling across varying writing systems; and section Spelling as a Basic conventions and above phonological errors. Writing Process approaches spelling as a basic writing process, related to handwriting and important to produce good texts. Non-phonological Sources of Knowledge Despite the undeniable role of phonology in spelling, there is now The Informative Nature of Misspellings a substantial amount of evidence showing that non-phonological In the last decades, researchers have developed several spelling sources of knowledge are used to spell words correctly from very scoring methods, which are fine-grained alternatives to the early on (Treiman, 2017). Some of these sources are explored in traditional correct/incorrect scoring (Treiman et al., 2019). These this section, across six articles. methods provide detailed information about the challenges Salas looked into the non-phonological spelling strategies used imposed by spelling in varying writing systems, different by Catalan-speaking children in Grade 2 and 4, with exposure developmental points, or writing tasks with variable demands. to Catalan outside school or not. Results were similar regardless Five articles included in this section of the Research Topic of Catalan exposure and showed that strategies requiring focused on the types of misspellings produced by writers, morphophonological or orthographic knowledge were mastered among which three compared different orthographies. Joye et before those requiring morphological or lexical knowledge. al. examined error types produced in dictation and composition Moreover, all non-phonological strategies had a significant by monolingual 9–10-year-olds with Developmental Language and unique contribution to conventional spelling. In a sample Disorder, speakers of French and English. Findings revealed of Portuguese children, Vale and Perpétua also showed the more morphological errors in French than English in both tasks reliance on non-phonological information from very early on, by and more orthographic errors in English than French in the examining the spelling of the schwa (/ /)—a phonologically (or e dictation task. Additionally, segmentation and contraction errors minimal) segment—absent in Portuguese first graders at two time were more frequent in French, whereas morphological ending points, with a 3-month gap. Despite the weak alphabet knowledge errors appeared more often in English. O’Brien et al. studied at the first assessment, children tended to represent schwa vowels phonological, orthographic, and morphological errors across mostly with the appropriate letter . This representation three language groups composed of bilingual children learning increased over 3 months and, at both time points, was used more English plus an Asian alphabetic script (Malay), akshara script often in potentially orthographic illegal than legal phonological (Tamil), or hanzi script (Mandarin Chinese). Results showed consonantal clusters. that the Tamil group produced more overall errors and that Two additional articles present cross-sectional studies the three groups differed in the proportions of phonological investigating morphological-related knowledge. Schiff et al. errors (more prevalent in Malay) and morphological errors focused on the role of morpho-orthographic principles in (more prevalent in Malay and Chinese, albeit rare). In older, homophonous affix letter spelling among Hebrew speaking adult participants Martin et al. explored differences in spelling students in Grades 2, 4, 7, and 10. Despite the increased accuracy and phonological awareness between distinctive writing systems. across all affix letters, findings showed a differential application Authors compared L1 English speakers with speakers of English of morpho-orthographic principles throughout schooling. as a second language (ESL) using different L1 writing systems: Younger spellers were mostly assisted by morpho-orthographic alphabet, abjad, and morphosyllabary. L1 English speakers sites, morphological category frequency, and phonological performed better than all ESL groups, which differed in terms transparency, whereas the spelling of older ones was more of their performance: the morphosyllabic L1 group showed affected by morpho-orthographic prevalence. Mussar et al. the highest word spelling accuracy and very low pseudoword explored morphological knowledge in a cross-sectional study spelling accuracy; the alphabetic L1 group showed the lowest with French-speaking children in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results spelling and phonological awareness accuracy. The misspellings showed that children’s performance on four morphological analysis revealed vowels to be more problematic than consonants, knowledge tasks improved across grades, even though they particularly in abjad L1 speakers. struggled more with explicit than implicit tasks. Moreover, Two other articles provided a comparison of error types those tasks converged into a single morphological knowledge between grades within the same orthographic system. Magalhães factor that predicted children’s ability to represent words with et al. examined Portuguese children’s misspellings across grade silent-letter endings, after controlling for grade, reading for (2, 4, and 6), type (phonetically inaccurate, phonetically accurate, pleasure, and general orthographic word recognition. and stress mark errors), and task (dictation and composition). The definition of morphological spelling is however not Results showed a progressive decrease in all error types except consensual, as discussed in the review article of Weth, who stress mark errors, which were more frequent in Grade 4; and proposes that syntactic markers (e.g., inflectional suffixes) should more misspellings in dictation than composing tasks. Spelling be distinguished from morphological spelling, which considers errors were found to be associated with texts of worse quality. inflection only in relation to the orthographic word. On the Yassin et al. tested the impact of visual-orthographic features of contrary, syntactic markers seem a specific category that is the Arabic abjad on spelling errors produced by first, second, part of the orthographic word but also indicate relational and fourth graders. Results showed a high rate of errors across information on phrase and clause level. Highlighting the need to Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 June 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 700604 Limpo et al. Editorial: Spelling Across Orthographies examining spelling by questioning the knowledge of grammatical text quality. Though both English and Catalan children were categories required to choose the correct spelling, Van Reybroeck challenged by spelling, their ability to spell correctly only conducted a study in 9–12-year-old French-speaking children influenced text quality in English. Evidence on the central role of with dyslexia that aimed to understand their grammatical spelling spelling in the development of solid literacy skills has motivated difficulties. Compared to grammatical spelling and age-matched the development of several instructional programs. Among these, peers, children with dyslexia identified fewer subjects of different technology-mediated ones have been gaining prominence, such complex-structure sentences, suggesting a specific deficit in as the GraphoLearn technology. This is reviewed by Lyytinen et syntactic awareness. al. with a focus on its effectiveness to the acquisition of basic spelling skills in different alphabetic writing systems, mainly in Spelling as a Basic Writing Process Occidental countries. The use of a game-based technology to As proposed in many cognitive models of writing (e.g., Graham, support the teaching of reading and writing in Asia and Africa 2018), the activity of producing text relies on the enactment of is also discussed. several processes. Together with handwriting (or typing), spelling constitutes a very basic writing process (i.e., transcription). The CONCLUSION link between spelling and writing processes is addressed in this section. This Research Topic gathered a collection of articles dealing Caravolas et al. compared the spelling and handwriting with issues related to spelling in several orthographic systems. legibility of Welsh-English bilingual children in Grades 3–5 with Our ultimate goal was to intensify discussions about the same age and same spelling-ability English-monolingual peers. specific and universal underpinnings of spelling acquisition and As expected, bilingual children displayed weaker spelling and development. Several insightful discussions had already taken handwriting skills than age-matched peers. A major finding place during the elaboration of this work. We do hope those was that handwriting legibility improved more with spelling reflections will continue and stimulate new research into spelling. ability than with handwriting practice emerging from years This will deepen our knowledge about spelling and, ultimately, of schooling and maturation. Ding et al. investigated the promote its acquisition, and development around the globe. links between handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy in a 2-year longitudinal study that followed children living in AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS mainland China from the third to the fifth grade. Cross- lagged analysis showed a bidirectional predictive association TL wrote a first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and between handwriting and spelling, after accounting for the well- approved the manuscript. established cognitive measures. Suárez-Coalla et al. investigated how the spelling deficits associated with dyslexia affect the FUNDING dynamics of handwriting in 9–12-year-old native Spanish speakers. Compared to their chronological age-matched peers, Preparation of this Research Topic was supported by the children with dyslexia showed longer writing durations, a larger M2S Project funded through the Operational Programme for effect of word frequency in within-word pauses in articles Competitiveness and Internationalization, supported by FEDER and nouns, and a more prolonged phonology-to-orthography and national funds allocated to the Portuguese Foundation for consistency effect in the pauses before the target word. Science and Technology (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-028404) and Providing a broader perspective on the role of spelling by the grant CPUP UID/PSI/00050/2013. in literacy, Llauradó and Dockrell explored the relationships between handwriting, spelling, reading, and text production ACKNOWLEDGMENTS among second, fourth, and sixth graders speaking three different languages: Catalan, English, and Spanish. Spanish children We are deeply grateful to all authors who have contributed to this produced fewer misspellings and spelling ability did not predict Research Topic. REFERENCES Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a Graham, S. (2018). A revised writer(s)-within-community model of writing. Educ. potential conflict of interest. Psychol. 11, 258–279. doi: 10.1080/00461520.2018.1481406 Graham, S., and Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Read. Writ. Copyright © 2021 Limpo, Salas, Van Reybroeck and Castro. This is an open-access Interdiscip. J. 27, 1703–1743. doi: 10.1007/s11145-014-9517-0 article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC Treiman, R. (2017). Learning to spell words: findings, theories, and issues. Sci. Stud. BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided Read. 21, 265–276. doi: 10.1080/10888438.2017.1296449 the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original Treiman, R., Caravolas, M., and Kessler, B. (2019). What methods of scoring young publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. children’s spelling best predict later spelling performance? J. Res. Read. 42, No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these 80–96. doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12241 terms. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3 June 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 700604