Once transcribed, the strategies reported by children on the elicitation task were coded in one of four categories. The same categories as in the analysis of spelling errors were used: phonological, morphological, orthographic, or semantic.
A phonological strategy was coded if a child clearly relied on sound-to-spelling correspondence in his explanation, e.g. “Use your phonics, and then go /s/, /t/, /r/, /ɛ/, /n/, /ɡ /, /t/, /h/.” or “Listen the sounds.”. When the child clearly relied on the phonemic, syllabic or rime unit, this was also coded.
A morphological strategy was coded when the child relied on knowledge of morphological parsing in his explanation, e.g. “Caring and careless are kind of the same, but just remember that careless is when no one cares, so just put care and then a less.” or “Just remember climb and add -e-d-.” A distinction was made between derivational and inflectional morphology.
An orthographic strategy was coded when children relied on orthographic knowledge in their explanation, either because they knew the word (retrieval, e.g. “Because I already knew.”), because they called on memorisation (e.g. “There is a way, you just have to remember it.” or “It is -i-g-h- as in "I Gallop Horses", and you can remember it like that”), because they knew a similar word or word chunk (analogy/regularity, e.g. “I would say guest. You take the -t- away and then you just add an -s-.”, “Hum, /raɪt/, it's light with an -r- on it, with an -r- instead of an -l-.”), or because they knew a spelling rule (e.g. “Because when you are adding -ing you've got to take the -e- off.” or “-i- before e except after -c-”).
Semantic strategies were coded when the child relied on semantic distinction, e.g. “And this one is new, like I brought a brand-new pair of trainers, it also has a different meaning”.
Finally, a category was added for responses that were considered task-specific. Because children were given spelling options, many of them used an elimination strategy on
explaining their spelling choice. Initially responses were differentiated in terms of whether children relied on the sound (phonological), orthographic form (visuo-orthographic) or meaning (semantic) of the other options to explain their choice, but this was not further analysed as the focus was on explaining the spelling of the target word rather than the other spelling options given.
Irrelevant reports and instances where children did not know any strategy were further coded as “other”.
Specific examples for both languages and each strategy type are given in Table 6-16. When a child did not respond spontaneously, children’s responses to the prompting questions were also coded. If a child relied on more than one strategy in his explanation, each strategy was coded separately.
A second coder was trained. She was French-English bilingual and had experience designing and using a similar strategy coding scheme. She independently recoded 10% of the strategy samples (10 participants, 406 strategies). Cohen’s Kappa reached .71 (80%). Following reliability checks, both coders pursued coding independently, checking any problematic decisions together.
Table 6-16: Strategy types and examples in both languages
Overall category Fine-grained coding Example (EN) Example (FR)
PHON – Reliance on sound-spelling
correspondences
PHON-general “Maybe just sound it out.” « Et le reste ça s'écrit comme t'entends. »
PHON-phoneme “It’s gonna be /b/i/g/” « Tu récites en une fois, tu fais /mɛr/, tu fais /m/ɛ/r/. » PHON-syllable “You go /si:/ and /lɪŋ/.” « Déjà on peut le séparer, on fait /ɡʁɛ̃/ et /pa/. » PHON-rime/onset “Put /ength/ and then put /str/” « On coupe en deux : /pl/ et /ɔ̃/ »
ORTH – Reliance on orthographic form of the word
ORTH-retrieval “I can remember it from Read write inc.” “Because I've spelt it before.”
« Parce que j’ai déjà vu ce mot, je l’ai appris. » « je sais qu'il s'écrit avec un -d-. »
ORTH-memorisation “Then /ai/ as in "I Galop Horses", and you can remember it like that.”
“You go /knu:/.” (to remember knew)
“I could practice writing it down a couple of times, and then I could give it to somebody and read it out, and then check.”
“Look, cover, write, check.”
« Parce qu'à la fin on met un -d-, on dit /plafɔ̃d/ pour s'en souvenir. »
« Sinon on fait une affiche, on travaille ce mot plusieurs fois. On le lit, on lit on lit, et on dit à ses parents comment l'écrire et normalement on le sait. »
ORTH-
analogy/regularity
“Hum, /raɪt/, it's light with an -r- on it. With an - r- instead of an -l-.”
« le /sjɔ̃/ à la fin, ça fait pas avec un -c-. C'est comme récréation, c'est -t-i-o-n-. »
ORTH-rule “I’ve remembered a pattern that the teacher said: I before e expect after c. So I remember that so that’s how you spell ceiling.”
“usually - whenever you put -ing, or something with ride, you take the -e- off.”
« Mer tu l'écris comme "meur", tu mets pas d'accent vu que c'est entre deux consonnes, du coup tu mets pas d'accent. »
« c'est la règle du -m-b-p-, fin faut toujours mettre un - m- devant un -m- un -b- ou un -p-. »
MOR – Reliance on morphological units
MOR-inflection “Because the one below it doesn't have the -e- d- at the end, so it wouldn't be in the past tense”
« et après le -a-i-t-, c'est la terminaison de l'imparfait, donc après ça faut connaître aussi. »
MOR-derivation “Caring and careless are kind of the same, but just remember that careless is when no one cares, so just put care and then a less.”
« On prend plombier et à partir du -b- on coupe tout ce qu'il y a derrière. » (pour plomb)
Overall category Fine-grained coding Example (EN) Example (FR) SEM – Reliance on
semantic distinctions
SEM-homophones “Cause without the -k- is new as in "brand new", as in "just got it". Knew is what you guessed would happen, or knew would happen.”
« Parce que le mot mère avec l'accent grave -r-e-, c'est la mère, celle qui fait partie de notre famille. Et la mar, c'est là où sont les canards, et la mer, c'est comme un océan.»
ELIM – Reliance on other spelling options (elimination strategy)
ELIM-phonological “That one just says han.” « Parce que sinon là ça fait /ɡʀo/ et là ça fait /ɡʀɛ/.» ELIM-visual “It's right but it's in the wrong order.”
“This one it doesn’t look right.”
« Parce que j’ai jamais vu ça -o-u-a-. » « Là ça paraîtrait bizarre »
ELIM-semantic “That’s not a real word that one” « Parce que on peut pas dire ça, ça n'existe pas. Et celui- là, c'est pas un mot. »
OTHER– No/irrelevant response
Asking-dictionary “Look in the dictionary!” « Et sinon on cherche dans le dictionnaire. Ou on demande à un adulte. »
No response-
irrelevant
“I don’t know”
“You could do an action like you turn to your right, and then you spell out the word.”
“I just guessed.”
« Je sais pas trop. »
« Je suis sûre, parce que j’avais un chat. » « J’ai fait au hasard. »