PHONOLOGICAL SPELLING-ERRORS IN THE WRITING OF DYSLEXIC ADOLESCENTS

Spelling researchers in the past have disagreed about the meaning of s pelling errors for the diagnosis of dyslexia. Many studies have report ed that spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are similar to th ose of younger children but that they are not deviant or unusual. In t his study, spelling errors from the spontaneous writing of 19 adolesce nts with a history of reading problems and persistent spelling difficu lties were analyzed. The poorer spellers in this group made more error s than the better spellers on certain phonological and morphophonologi cal constructions. Specifically, the poorer spellers made a disproport ionately large number of errors in their representation of liquid and nasal consonants, especially after vowels, and their spellings of infl ections -ed and -s. Even though poor spellers might eventually learn t o spell with reasonable phonetic accuracy, their spelling appears to b e marked by persistent, intractable difficulties representing specific phonological and morphophonological features of words.