Publication Details
Abstract
Spelling is the ability to produce in written or oral form the correct arrangement of letters. It is an important language arts skill, and it has been incorporated into the primary educational programs since preschool begins formally. The purposes of this study was to compare spelling performance between Iraqi-Speaking and English-Speaking children in kindergartens. The case study of the study were 23 kindergartners in Iraq and Turkey. Their numbers according were as follows: 43 Kurdish Iraqi-speaking children, 20 Arabian Iraqi-speaking children, and 49 European Englishspeaking children. They were asked to write the following eight words: "punishment," "cement," "pop," "vacation," "motion," "vale," "umbrella" and "ocean." The developmental levels were found to be similar, but there were some differences between the English-speaking and Iraqi-speaking children, especially with respect to the first phoneme-grapheme correspondences they made.