 La' Shonda Edwards |
School: University of Mississippi
Major: Communicative Disorders (Speech Pathology) Mentor: Dr. Lennette Ivy Expected Graduation Date: May 2005 Organizations and Honors:
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ABSTRACT
Evidence of Dialect Influence in the Spelling of African American Children
| The purpose of this research was to determine if African American English (AAE) phonology influences spelling development in African American third-graders. In a larger research study, story-retelling and responding to interview questions were used to obtain writing samples from third- and eighth-grade students, who were speakers of AAE. The misspellings in the writing samples of the third-graders were analyzed for the purpose of the current study. A content analysis was conducted on the misspellings of seven third-graders. The results revealed evidence of AAE phonological features specifically, unstressed syllable deletion, syllable addition, consonant cluster reduction, devoicing of final consonant, and monophthongization of diphthongs. In addition, the results revealed evidence of the morphosyntatic feature, zero past tense, in these third-graders’ misspellings. |