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The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language. Results showed no differences between the two groups on the number of correct short vowel spellings, even though the sounds for four of the five English short vowels do not exist in Spanish. By contrast, differences were observed in the representation of long vowels with a higher rate of error among ELLs. The students had not received explicit instruction in long vowels. ELLs appeared to be trying to represent the diphthongized nature of some English long vowels by spelling long vowels with more than one vowel. The results support the authors' hypothesis that kindergarten phonics instruction had an impact on the invented spellings of new second language vowel phonemes.

This study compared the English spelling of native Spanish-speaking children receiving English-only instruction with monolingual native English speaking children at the end of kindergarten. In invented spelling, young bilingual children can show us how they perceive the unique sounds of English by the way they map English letters onto non-Spanish sounds. The spelling of non-Spanish phonemes and English and Spanish stop consonants differing in voice onset time were examined. The relationship of plausible English spelling with English vocabulary knowledge was also investigated. The bilingual kindergarteners had significantly fewer correct spellings of ending stop consonants, which differ phonetically in English and Spanish, than did the monolingual group. No significant difference between the two groups at the end of kindergarten was found when spelling non-Spanish phonemes however. The lexical restructuring model was applied to explain a positive correlation between vocabulary and plausible English spellings.

Examines the relationship between ability to invent spellings and ability to finger-point read memorized text in 109 kindergartners in whole-language classrooms. Finds that letter name knowledge and phonemic awareness account for ability in finger-point reading, but that invented spelling, because it requires the left-to-right alphabetic principle as well, accounts for additional variance. (SC)