Spelling errors and phonological awareness skills in children with typical and atypical phonological development

To verify and correlate the spelling errors present in the written productions to the performance in phonological awareness skills of children in different school years, with typical and atypical phonological development.

The sample consisted of 50 children divided into two groups: with typical phonological development (TPD) and with atypical phonological development (APD); students from the early years (1st to 5th grades) of schooling and ages between 6:0 and 10:0 years old. The children were submitted to speech-language and audiological evaluations. Data were tabulated and statistical analyzes were performed using the Spearman Correlation Coefficient.

In relation to the number of spelling errors in writing, these were similar in the TPD and APD groups, except for the contextual-arbitrary errors that were greater for the APD. Still, it was observed that the number of written spelling errors decreased with the increase in schooling. Concerning the average performance in phonological awareness, the TPD performed better than the APD in syllabic and phonemic awareness. The children of 4th and 5th grades presented better performance in phonological awareness than those in grades 1st to 3rd.

The correlation was inversely proportional between the phonological awareness performance and the number of spelling errors (those that alter the syllabic structure) for both groups, demonstrating that the more errors of this type, the lower the performance in syllabic, phonemic and total phonological awareness.