Going Through a Bad Spell: What the Spelling Errors of Young ESL Learners Reveal about Their Grammatical Knowledge

The spelling errors of 215 Grade 6 ESL learners were examined with a view to gaining an understanding of how these children construe and misconstrue the structure of their L2. It was found that unstressed grammatical (function) words proved particularly difficult for the learners to render in writing. The children achieved much higher success rates with lexical (content) words, which are more salient both phonetically and informationally. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between an ability to spell grammatical words accurately and increased use of verbal morphology. These findings add to the growing body of literature that argues that mere exposure to an L2, even when that exposure is intensive and sustained, is not enough to ensure learner uptake.