Spelling

The category with the second most mistakes was spelling. The mistakes were divided into 16 different categories according to the typical dyslexic mistake categories by Ruoppila, Röman and Västi (1969, 9):

1. capital or small initial letter 2. reversal/rotation

3. missing letter in gemination (i.e. double letter sequences) 4. missing letter in long vowels

5. missing letter 6. m/n confusion 7. ng-sound mistakes 8. wrong letter

9. mistakes in compounds 10. mistakes in punctuation 11. missing word

12. wrong but meaningful word 13. wrong word ending

14. non-word 15. missing syllable

16. additional letter and other mistakes

Mistakes in the category 1 mean that there are small letters at the beginning of the sentences or capital letters in the middle of them, or that words beginning with a capital letter

are written with a small one and vice versa. Reversal and rotation are very typical errors for dyslexics. Reversal means that letters change places inside a word e.g. mohter – mother and in rotation the letters turn upside down or around e.g. p-b, d-b, d-g. The confusion of letters ‘m’

and ‘n’ as well as difficulties spelling the ng-sound (e.g. now-know) are in their own categories. Categories 3, 4 and 5 contain mistakes in which letters are missing from words.

These include for example mistakes where doubled consonants are missing from double letter sequences (e.g. litle) or when instead of diphthongs there is just one vowel. Besides missing letters dyslexics can also miss entire words from sentences (11.) or forget one syllable from a word (15.). Because of difficulties in distinguishing different sounds and thus with

pronunciation dyslexics tend to write words with wrong letters and add unnecessary letters.

The category of non-words includes words in which there are two or more spelling mistakes as well as words that are totally incomprehensible.

The spelling mistakes of these compositions could be fitted into 14 of the 16 categories. No mistakes were found in the categories 4 missing letter in long vowels or 10 mistakes in punctuation, probably because long vowels are not very common in English and punctuation is quite free in English, as well. The errors in all categories showed that the majority of the spelling mistakes were caused by writing the words as they are pronounced.

This kind of errors could be found in 7 different categories. Also voiced and voiceless consonants as well as the quality and quantity of consonants and vowels seemed to cause errors in various categories. The most mistakes were found in the categories 8 wrong letter;

61 mistakes, 16 additional letter and other mistakes; 41 mistakes and 5 missing letter; 37 mistakes.

8.3.2.1 Wrong letter

Many of the errors in this category were caused by writing the words according to their pronunciation, e.g. shoss – shoes, coorses – course’s, staff – stuff, inough – enough, distroyed

– destroyed, injoy - enjoy. Also the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants e.g.

studend – student, prodect – protect, halv – half, as well as sounds that are not used in Finnish language very often /s/, /∫/, /t∫/, e.g. sheaper – cheaper, plaze – place, lissen – listen and the correct way to write /k/ sounds, e.g. teknical – technical , musik – music, seemed to be difficult for the dyslexics. There were also signs of similar looking letters getting mixed up with each other e.g. qreat – great, fovourite- favourite. Surprisingly, the correct spelling of small, very probably also familiar, words seemed to be problematic for some dyslexic students, as well, as the words is, it and in tended to get mixed up.

8.3.2.2 Additional letter and other mistakes

A lot of the errors in this category, as well, were written according to their pronunciation e.g.

ounly, teatchers, houers, almoust, booring. In addition to this also the quantity of particular consonants seemed to cause difficulties for dyslexics, especially adjectives that end with one

‘l’ but have two in their adverb form, e.g. usuall, traditionall, succesfull, as well as words beginning with al-, e.g. allmost, allways. The majority of the mistakes in this category,

however, were pure spelling mistakes e.g. mynth – myth, appereciated, perioid, bungs – buns, eacht, or mixtures of two different words, trailway – railway, peans – peas. In some cases it was quite obvious that the writer had confused the word with another word that had an entirely different meaning but sounded the same, e.g. Stare ( There) were a lot of student in the classroom; I live fantasy words (world); If I taking to (the) money; ...a boat each (which) sinks. Also the influence of other parts of speech could be seen in some words. For example some adjectives had the ending -y that is usually used with adverbs and some were written with the ending -s that is used with nouns, e.g. cleary, populary, funnys, artistics.

8.3.2.3 Missing letter

Again, pronunciation was the reason why the majority of the words in this category were spelt wrong, e.g. bak, dosn’t, intresting, exept, wich – which, were – where. However, a large number of the mistakes were also caused by difficulties in distinguishing the quality of different sounds, especially /∫/ and /θ/ sounds e.g. punisment, Finnis, fasionable, someting, tree – three, monts – months. Some of the letters in the words seemed to be missing because they are very short or not pronounced very strongly and thus it is rather difficult to hear them in the word e.g. nowdays, parens, telvision, rive – drive. Rest of the misspelt words could not be put in a particular group but they were regular spelling mistakes.