Are spelling difficulties the expression of a phonological deficit? The development of orthographic knowledge and phonological recoding ability in the 2(nd) to 4(th) grade of the elementary school

The development of orthographic knowledge was investigated in pupils of the : 2(nd) to 4(th) grade of elementary school by the recognition and producti on of critical spelling patterns in words whose correct spelling could only be found out through word specific knowledge or through the knowledge of m orphematic connections. This line of development was contrasted with the de velopment of phonological recoding which was evaluated by means of the task of writing words with voiced versus unvoiced stop consonants, with consona nt clusters and of pseudowords. Poor spellers lagged behind average speller s of the same grade in both areas. Compared to younger average students of the same spelling level they had greater problems with phonological recodin g tasks and a higher developed orthographical knowledge. A more detailed an alysis revealed that poor spellers did not fully overcome their specific pr oblems with the spelling of consonant clusters and in the discrimination be tween the spelling of voiced and unvoiced stop consonants until the middle of the fourth grade, Difficulties in writing pseudowords persisted also and these can be seen as an expression of enduring difficulties in phonologica l recoding without the help of wordspecific information. Deficits in phonol ogical recoding seem therefore to be a main source of spelling difficulties in German despite the relatively regular nature of the writing system.