The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language.…

This study compared the English spelling of native Spanish-speaking children receiving English-only instruction with monolingual native English speaking children at the end of kindergarten. In invented spelling, young bilingual children can show us how they perceive the unique sounds of English by the way they map English letters onto non-Spanish…

Examines the relationship between ability to invent spellings and ability to finger-point read memorized text in 109 kindergartners in whole-language classrooms. Finds that letter name knowledge and phonemic awareness account for ability in finger-point reading, but that invented spelling, because it requires the left-to-right alphabetic principle…