Spelling Errors in The Writings of Upper Intermediate Foreign Learners of English: Theory and a Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of an un-elicited corpus of English spelling errors from Turkish learners. It focuses on the issues raised by an earlier corpus-based analysis of errors made by native speakers and on the theoretical significance of the findings of both these studies.A review of the theoretical background to spelling error analysis is followed by a quantitative analysis of spelling mistakes made by upper intermediate level Turkish learners of English. The results indicate that native and foreign writers share a number of cognitive and perceptual processes in the production of English spellings, notably those concerning a degree of independence of orthography from phonology, sensitivity to word length, and the relative perceptual salience of segmental positions within the word.