Orthographic development of French children exposedto different teaching practices

Abstract

This article aims at understanding how children’s orthographic performance is improved in two classes of Preparatory Course (CP) exposed to contrasting teaching methods of reading-writing. The study took place in two primary schools, located in Grenoble-France region. Longitudinal orthographic assessments were performed in two classes (A and B) to analyze orthographic knowledge throughout the school year. The written outputs of the children were analyzed in order to determine the orthographic level, the types of words used, the nature of the procedures and the effect of the words frequency. The results showed that children in class B, exposed to a balanced teaching of several didactic and pedagogical strategies encompassing the meaning and the code, respected more the orthographic constraints in the tests. The performance gap between the two classes widened over the course of the school year. In both classes, erroneous spellings decreased throughout the year, while approximate spelling and orthographic increased. Errors of omission and substitution were most pronounced at the beginning and at the end of the year. The analysis of the word frequency factor indicates that the pupils from class B wrote more orthographically the very frequent words. For students in class A the effect of word frequency was not observed. These results provide a basis for discussion on the question of the development of orthographic learning in different teaching contexts.