Toward a redefinition of spelling in shallow orthographies: Phonological, lexical and grammatical skills in learning to spell Italian

The study reported in this chapter aimed to identify the role that phonological, vocabulary (semantics), and grammatical knowledge plays in Italian children's spelling development. To our knowledge, no previous research has investigated the contribution of different kinds of linguistic knowledge in the early stages of learning to spell Italian words. This chapter might then be the first contribution in this direction. The current study reported evidence that this complexity may also hold for learning to spell in shallow, transparent orthographies. Even though children learn to spell words in different ways according to the characteristics of the written language there are exposed to (Cury Polio, Kressler, & Treiman, 2009), that does not mean that the kinds of knowledge children bring to learning to spell are necessarily different.