I am interested in how L1 orthography and phonetics affects the learning of English especially ones that have completely different orthographic systems and do not have the minimal pairs that we do. My main goal is to improve spelling. For my research goal, individual software would be the best mode for obtaining the data needed. I would like to focus on words with difficult minimal pairs and assess their ability to hear and spell these words. I would also like to see if context would aid in the correct spelling of the word. Some possible research questions could be: Does the perceived pronunciation of a word affect the spelling of that word or is it the other way around? Does context help the participant identify the correct spelling of the word? Does self-correction or automatic correction help with improving spelling on these certain words?
If I had a software for this, it would ideally get pre- and post- information about the spelling ability of each participant on the target words. It would track whether self-correction or automatic correction helped improve spelling.
6 comments:
That is an interesting topic and related to Le Anne's research. A possible collaboration? I also think that what you are interested in matches some of the interests that Dennie has and you might be able to work with him on developing some tools like this. Will this be your MA thesis? Or is it? I can't remember how far along in the program you are.
I think this is a really interesting research idea!
Spelling! That a girl! haha i wrote about context too this time (defined as number of words per line of text)
I think that this is a very interesting topic. Also, I think that it would be interesting to see whether or not the native language of a speaker influences the sounds produced in the target language. In Spanish, many words begin with es- and I have observed in many instances where this carries over into English (pronouncing words that begin with "s" like they begin with "es-").
I don't know if such a software exists but I'll keep an eye opened! I think that spelling and pronunciation are definitely two big issues in English (and in French). I used to confuse tough/through/though all the time. So similar spellings but so different pronunciations!
I would love to try to create this software unfortunately I haven't had any time to do this, but hopefully after I graduate I will have more free time for things like this.
Post a Comment