Children's Use of Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences in Spelling: Roles of Position and Stress

Whether children's ability to use phoneme-grapheme correspondences in spelling is affected by the position of the phoneme in the word or syllable and by the stress of the syllable was examined. Experiment 1, conducted with monosyllabic nonwords, was performed with kindergartners and 1st graders. Experiments 2 and 3, conducted with bisyllabic nonwords, were carried out with 1st graders. Children spelled the first and last phonemes of nonwords more accurately than the middle phonemes. Also, children performed better on syllable-initial single consonants than on syllable-final single consonants. Errors tended to be more common for phonemes in unstressed syllables than for phonemes in stressed syllables. Together, the results suggest that the context in which a phoneme occurs influences children's ability to spell it.