Abstract: Because of the great differences between Chinese writing system and English wirting system, EFL learners have great difficulty in aquiring the complex rules of English writing system. This essay will investigate English spelling from Chinese EFL learners’ essays, to explore what kinds of spelling errors they tend to make. It tries to see what influence of Chinese writing system make on English spelling acquisition, to help EFL learners grasp spelling systems effectively.
Keywords: English Spelling；Spelling Acquisition；EFL
摘 要：由于中文与英文的拼写系统相差甚远，国内多数的英语学习者对于英语拼写系统中各种复杂规则的习得存在着严重的问题。本文将以中国英语学习者的英语习作为例，研究分析其拼写错误的种类，探索其中文拼写对英语拼写习得产生何种影响，以便促进英语学习者更好获得英语拼写系统的习得。
关键词：英语拼写；拼写习得；将英语作为外语的学习者
1. Introduction
In the last few decades, researchers (Brooks, Gorman & Kendall 1993, Wade-woolley & Siegel 1997, Cook 2004) have carried out investigations to deal with different spelling systems. The necessity for exploring different language spelling systems has been illustrated by Peters (1967). He pointed out that if one has poor ability to spell, his communication may also suffer great problems. Sampson (1985) also agreed with this point of view, by illustrating that people who is lack of ability to spell, in turn, it may have difficulty in reading his own misspelling. Due to the great differences between Chinese and English writing systems, most of the Chinese EFL learners find it “difficult to understand the principle of alphabetic writing and to grasp how spellings represent linguistic” (Shankweiler & Lundquist 1992: 179). Cook (1997) and Wang & Geva (2003 a) explained that Chinese students encounter with great difficulty in comprehending complex rules of English spelling system, even after years of English acquisition. Based on the previous research, attention should be paid to explore why learners have difficulty in spelling and to seek how to grasp spelling systems effectively (Shankweiler & Lundquist 1992, Cook 2004).
This paper will investigate English spelling from Chinese university EFL learners’ essays, to explore what kinds of spelling errors they tend to make. It tries to see what influence of Chinese writing system make on English spelling acquisition. First of all, it will illustrate the background information about Chinese and English writing systems, especially differences between these two languages on spelling. Meanwhile, current situation faced by Chinese university EFL learners on spelling will be elaborated with results from previous research. Secondly, it will introduce briefly the method of this investigation. Detail results about this investigation with discussion will be the third part. Analysis of spelling errors and influences of different writing systems will be presented with some suggestions in this part. Finally, a brief conclusion will be given on English spelling teaching for Chinese university EFL learners. 2. Background
In this part, differences between Chinese and English writing systems will be elaborated from two perspectives based on previous research. Then it will follow with detailed explanation about background information and reasons that Chinese university EFL learners have difficulty in English spelling.
Firstly, English and Chinese are two distinctive writing systems. The English writing system belongs to a kind of sound-based writing. The sound-based writing system tends to create relationships between letters and meanings by using sounds (Cook 2004). The writing of English has a close relationship between symbols and syllables. Each letter or word has its certain phoneme or syllable to produce the sound. There are only a small number of symbols needed in English writing system, in order to make this system work effectively. While Chinese writing system is meaning-based, which the Chinese characters can be interpreted directly to meaning. It is identified that “a meaning-based system relies on separate symbols for each meaning” (Cook 2004:5). Thus the Chinese system requires learners to master a great number of separate characters. It is true that most of the Chinese characters are composed of characters no matter what structures they are (Wang, Perfetti & Liu 2005). It is indicated that an educated Chinese speaker might acquire about 5,000 characters (Cook 2004:5). Without any variety on form, to some extent, Chinese writing system is easier to acquire. It does not need to process inflection on words’ form. For example, ‘吃’ (‘eat’), there is no need to change form of that character to identify past tense or future tense. However, in English, ‘eat’ can be varied from ‘ate’ to ‘eating’ to refer to different tenses. Regarding to the differences between these two language systems, it may be one of the reasons that Chinese EFL learners have problems in English spelling. Apart from this, English writing has its complexity and irregular rules of spelling (Shankweiler & Lundquist 1992, Coulmas 1996). Thus the spelling system of English requires more complex knowledge to process than Chinese writing system.
Secondly, features in these two language writing systems are different. Chinese is a logographic language system. The visual unit in Chinese is morpheme, but not the unit of pronunciation. Regarding to this aspect, the word is the visual unit in Chinese written system. Based on the principles of Chinese, it is a “one-to-one mapping relation between characters and morphemes” (Coulmas 1996:80). The principle of one-to-one makes it easy to process the language spelling acquisition. However, English writing system has been criticized that it does not follow the one-to-one principle in most cases (Cook 2004, Rollings 2004, Peter 2003). It is criticized that the English spelling system is lack of correspondence with “phonetic transcription of the spoken language” Chomsky (1970:287). Meanwhile, Cook (2004) also explained this by providing examples to state that there are mix matches between letters and sounds in English writing. For example, the sound of letter is /ai/, while when comes up in words, it has different sounds, i.e. correspond to in , in , and so on. There is no clear one-to-one principle between letters and phonemes, pairs of letters and pair of phonemes, vice versa. There is numerous silent letters in the English words. Due to this, it is predicted that Chinese learners may omit these letters in the English writing, which takes up the majority of their spelling errors. Taking all the above factors into consideration, the writing system of English involves a great deal of rules with irregularities and exceptions. The English writing system may be acceptable for native-speakers and professional readers, but it obviously has considerable difficulty for language learners, especially for those learners whose first language has distinctive writing system (Coulmas 1996). Rollings (2004:138) also pointed out that the complexity of English spelling illustrates “difficulties not only for learning it but also for understanding”. Thus, there is no doubt that Chinese EFL learners could not easily have a better cognition of the English spelling, and often make errors during their acquisition of English.
Current situation on teaching English spelling in China will be illustrated in the followings. Generally, most EFL learners in China begin to learn English when they are 10-years old, in the third year of primary school. In this stage of second language study, simple words and structures will be taught through practice. When they have English class during the six years of secondary and high school learning, some teachers will try to present English writing rules through vocabulary study, but not in a systematical way.
A great deal of research (Leong & Sophie 1996, Coulmas 1996) on Chinese EFL showed that learners have great difficulty in comprehending knowledge of English writing due to many factors. Three main factors may be accounted for the current situation. Firstly, great differences between Chinese and English language writing systems. As mentioned above, the great differences between Chinese and English writing systems make learners feel frustrated to have a better understanding of English spelling. Different language writing systems will have great impact on spelling, like native speakers of Chinese spelling English. Studies (McCutcheon & Smith 1987, cited in Leong & Sophie 1996) have found that Chinese learners have difficulty to set apart some pronunciations, i.e. /p/, /k/, /b/, /g/ etc., which would affects spelling of English vocabularies. Then it comes to the second factor, which is the complexity of English writing system. Although, the English writing has its own complex rules on spelling. Most of the rules apply to a large number of words; there are still some exceptions in this system. In addition to this, the changes of pronunciation and spelling are not coordinated (Peter 2003). Apart from this, a certain number of English words are load words, which cannot be interpreted within the English spelling rules (Coulmas 1996). The comprehension about this implicit knowledge cannot be easy to process by non-native speakers (Peters 1976). As a result, the complexity and irregularity of English make Chinese high EFL learners confused, even after about several years of English study. The third and most significant factor may be lack of proper spelling teaching methods during the English language acquisition. Even though, teachers have realized learners do not have good competence of English spelling. Most teachers focus on linguistic knowledge and communication skills. Only a few of them pay little attention on writing system, because of the examination-oriented education system. Moreover, most of the rules are from teachers’ experience, just only a few come from text-book (Peters 1976). Having no enough material about spelling makes teachers at a loss on impart spelling skill and knowledge to learners. The importance of spelling is doubtless, it is claimed that “good spelling, like good grammar, is a distinct mark of culture” (The Common sense spelling book 1912, cited in Cook 2004:55). In addiction, “the misspelling of scientific terms can lead to errors in science, or even possibly danger” (Lamb 1991, 1992 cited in Brooks Gorman, Kendall 1993:24). Thus the competence of spelling is one of the essential skills for human beings. In order to deal with the English spelling difficulty faced by teachers and learners, there is necessary to call on investigations to carry out in the area about English spelling for Chinese EFL learners. This paper tries to analyse the English spelling mistakes from Chinese university EFL learners, to seek what kinds of mistakes they tend to make.
3. Method
All the participants in this investigation are undergoing the first-year study in the university. English is a compulsory module for all the participants. In addition, in the three years of high school study, teachers have already taught quite a few rules about English spelling system for learners, but not systematically. All the participants are native speakers of Mandarin. Data in this research are collected from essays written by the participants. Each written essay is in the vicinity of 200 words. The spelling errors will be analysed into six categories, i.e. “insertion, omission, substitution, transposition, grapheme substitution and others” (Brooks, Gorman & Kendall 1993:9). Many researchers applied these classifications into their investigations with high commendation, regarding the six categories as “conventional error categories” (Brooks, Gorman & Kendall 1993:9).
4. Result and Discussion
4.1 Result
The written essays are from one of the final test of the first semester. The test is designed by the education department in the university; all the same grade learners should take the test at the end of the semester. To some extent, the authority of the test ensures the validity and reliability of the result. The test aims to see whether the learners have the required English competence of that grade. The test includes five parts, which are listening, grammar, composing text, reading and writing. In this paper, the written essays are taken as samples randomly to ensure the result can be representative of learners from this level (Cohen, Manion and Morrison 2007). Then it will come to analyses the spelling mistakes in detail. The written essay is about writing a letter to inform the students of detail information of an English event. After collecting the mistakes from the written essays, the result has been analysed into six categories, which are “insertion, omission, substitution, transposition, grapheme substitution and others” (Brooks, Gorman & Kendall 1993:9). In the following, the detailed information about the result would be demonstrated in a table.
Most of the mistakes from the written essays have been classified into the above categories. The detail information table illustrates what kinds of spelling mistakes learners tend to make, especially the Chinese university EFL learners. The result from the participant is a little bit surprising that none of the mistakes from the essay belongs to the category of transposition. Cook (2004:124) also pointed out that “transposition is the least frequent”. At the same time, there is a great number of others mistake, which is related to the competence of grammar knowledge. It should be pointed out that in the paper these kinds of mistakes have been put into the category of others.
4.2 Discussion
The overall results of spelling mistakes show that learners are lack of knowledge of the English writing system. Each kind of mistake implies the reason of difficulty for Chinese EFL univeristy learners. In the followings, detailed discussion about these categories of mistakes would be illustrated.
First of all, about the kind of “insertion”, words are added some other letter in the original words, which make the words misspelled. For example: for . The result indicates that learners are not familiar with pronunciation of words. Secondly, it is about the mistake of “omission”, this kind of mistake takes up a certain amount among all the spelling mistakes. Most of the omissions are consonants, especially those consonants that do not produce real sound in the words. For example, misspelling for , sounds /t / in the word . While learners misunderstand that does not pronounce, and sounds /t /. Thus in the process of spelling, it is easy to misspell for . It may be the same kind of misunderstanding in the word for . It should be the for / :/. However, learners regard as / :/. Some of the double consonants are omitted e.g. for . There is a great deal of silent letters in the words that cannot raise learners’ awareness. This kind of spelling mistake elaborates that learners have the difficulty in matching consonant with letters. Even tough, there is some mixed group of letters have the certain consonants, which can be taught for learners. There is a great deal of exceptions goes beyond the rule of the spelling system that make learners feel frustrated (Cook 2004). Thirdly, the errors of “substitution” illustrates that learners do not master the words well. Once they could not spell the words correctly, the only way is to make the words from sounds in mind. From the data in this study, these mistakes take up a majority. When learners face the difficulty in the words’ spelling, they do not want to leave the empty blank. Thus they explore from their mind to seek the resemble words. In result, one of the possible ways is to substitute letters in the words. Brooks, Gorman and Kendall (1993:10) explain that “when more than one single-letter error occurred in a word, but the errors were interpreted by the markers as arising from one cause”, this kind of spelling mistake is “grapheme substitution”. In this study, the “grapheme substitution” takes up one of the majority. Learners regard some other words, which have the total difference meaning, as the other words. For example: for , for and so on. Regarding to this kind of mistakes, learners may confuse about the meaning of words, just take for granted that the sounds of the words may be the similar. It should be pointed out that most of these mistakes occur in the written essays with lower mark. It may have the relationship with the overall competence and acquisition of English writing knowledge. About the part of “other” spelling mistakes, most of the mistakes show that learners have not enough competence of grammar knowledge. Because the great differences between Chinese and English writing system, Chinese EFL learners confront with difficulty in coping with these two systems. After several years of English acquisition, the Chinese univeristy EFL learners still could not have a good competence of English spelling. Based on the previous research, some suggestions are provided for teachers and learners about acquiring English spelling skills. From the above result discussion, it is suggested that attention should be paid to not only “phonic” but also “visual strategies” when acquire knowledge of English writing system (Peters 1967, 1985 cited in Brooks, Gorman and Kendall 1993:13). It is believed that once raising learners’ awareness of the spelling mistakes and acquiring the visual knowledge about the writing system, it will promote the ability of writing (Wang & Geva 2003 b). It is stated that if one can indentify his spelling errors, he is on the way to the correct spelling (Field 2000). Moreover, learners should have the competence to “use the phonological processing route for relating letters and sounds in an alphabet-based writing system” (Cook 2007). For most of the Chinese university EFL learners, they usually just remember how to spell the words mechanically. Even though, sometimes they do not match the words and the meanings to each other and make jokes. It should be realized that teaching spelling by rules is not the best way for the English writing system. Although, most of the rules can be applied to a certain number of words, there are still some exceptions (Peters 1967). Some rules are complex for learners to comprehend and put them into practice. When teaching the knowledge of English writing system, teachers should consider differences between two languages writing systems for the Chinese university EFL learners. Peters (1967) suggested spelling can be acquired through certain learning process, such as reading and writing practice. Thus the suggestions above may be the guidelines for teachers and learner when Chinese university EFL learners acquire the English writing system.
5. Conclusion
In the paper, it illustrates what kinds of spelling mistakes that made by the Chinese univeristy EFL learners in detail. The categories form of mistakes elaborates that omission; substitution and grapheme substitution take up the majority of the mistakes from the written essays. Regarding to the analysis and discussion of mistakes, teachers and learners should pay more attention to the English spelling. In the process of English acquisition, knowledge about the English system can be imposed at the beginning stage of the English study, to raise learners’ awareness of language writing system (Cook 1997). At the same time, skills on spellings should be taught to help Chinese learners to deal with the difficulties in English spelling, due to the differences between the two languages writing systems. Taking all the information above into consideration, a number of limitations should be considered in the later research study to make it better. Firstly, the number of the essay sample is too small. Maybe in the future more samples should be involved to explore this area to make sure the result more valid and reliabe. Secondly, the application of data analysis should mix with others technique to interpret the data in more detail way. Thirdly, in this study it shows that there is none mistakes in “transposition”. Further research is needed to explore the spelling mistake category of “transposition” to seek its relation with others.
6. References:
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作者简介：许美娟，女，汉族，广东潮州 现就职于韩山师范学院陶瓷学院基础教育师资部。 主要研究方向：对外英语教育与应用语言学，英语教学法与教学模式。