Acquisition of Reading and Spelling in a Syllabo-Alphabetic Writing System

Abstract

Written language tasks were examined in 120 Gujarati-speaking children from Grades 2–4 to assess the development of such skills in a syllabo-alphabetic writing system. A level of mastery was found even at Grade 2 in all areas of written language processing examined, and by Grade 4 improvement was noted in most. This improvement, however, was generally uneven, and, although a similar developmental pattern was noted for several tasks, it proved to be coincidental. Substantial evidence was found for a shift from a grapheme-sound system to a lexical system for regular spelling from Grade 2 to Grade 4. The course of reading and spelling acquisition in a syllabo-alphabetic system used in India appears to be consistent with current models of reading acquisition constructed for alphabetic systems.