title: Lexical spelling in children and adolescents with specific language impairment: variations with the writing situation.
abstract: The goal of this study was to compare the lexical spelling performance of children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) in two contrasting writing situations: a dictation of isolated words (a classic evaluative situation) and a narrative of a personal event (a communicative situation). Twenty-four children with SLI and 48 typically developing children participated in the study, split into two age groups: 7-11 and 12-18 years of age. Although participants with SLI made more spelling errors per word than typically developing participants of the same chronological age, there was a smaller difference between the two groups in the narratives than in the dictations. Two of the findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) Between 12 and 18 years of age, in communicative narration, the number of spelling errors of the SLI group was not different from that of the typically developing group. (2) In communicative narration, the participants with SLI did not make specific spelling errors (phonologically unacceptable), contrary to what was shown in the dictation. From an educational perspective or that of a remediation program, it must be stressed that the communicative narration provides children-and especially adolescents-with SLI an opportunity to demonstrate their improved lexical spelling abilities. Furthermore, the results encourage long-term lexical spelling education, as adolescents with SLI continue to show improvement between 12 and 18 years of age.
authors.affiliation: Unité de Recherche Clinique - Centre Hospitalier H. Laborit, Poitiers, France; Université de Poitiers & CNRS, France. Electronic address: lucie.broc@univ-poitiers.fr.
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Broc
authors.forename: Josie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bernicot
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Olive
authors.forename: Monik
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Favart
authors.forename: Judy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reilly
authors.forename: Pauline
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Quémart
authors.forename: Joël
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Uzé
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D004519:Education, Special; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D010700:Phonetics; D014956:Writing
keywords: Lexical spelling; Pragmatics; Specific language impairment; Spelling education