Journal of Education and Human Development

June 2017, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 95-104

ISSN: 2334-296X (Print), 2334-2978 (Online)
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.
Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development
DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v6n2a10
URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/jehd.v6n2a10

The Effect of Spelling Errors on Written Text Production: the Case of Students with
Dyslexia in Secondary Education in the Area of Pella, Greece

Dr. Maria Pardali

School Pedagogical Advisor
Greek Ministry of Education
Research and Religious Affairs
Attica, Greece.

Mrs. Helen Mizamidou

Teacher
European University of Cyprus
Edessa, Pella, Greece

Abstract
This study had the purpose of researching and comparing the spelling errors made by students with learning
disabilities, as well as by those without them. More specifically, it is investigated whether these errors affect the
production of handwritten texts, how easily and quickly they are produced and generally the image of the written
text from a grammatical and syntactic point of view. In order to monitor and evaluate the above questions, we
used a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research. Initially, qualitative research was conducted through
individual examination which included an analysis of three different kinds of students' written samples. In a
second phase, the same participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire with closed questions mainly.The results
demonstrated significant difficulties for students with learning difficulties, concerning the type and the number of
spelling errors in a written text. These difficulties are related to their handwritten skills, visual processing of the
text, issues related to the coherence and the image of the writing, the structure and organization of the strategies
they use to reduce their spelling mistakes and the shortcomings in the way of being taught in school. This paper
will focus on the outcomes of qualitative research.
Keywords: Learning disabilities, dyslexia, language, spelling errors, vocabulary
1. Introduction
Nowadays, for reasons that are still being explored and redefined, a significant proportion of the student
population fails to meet the requirements of the curriculum, despite the fact that these students have normal
intellectual level or even special abilities. This situation is the phenomenon of Specific Learning Disabilities,
which includes dyslexia and extends to all levels of education, as a particular form of difficulty in writing, after
the increase of learning and adjustment problems. This challenge is observed in many schools. Surveys show that
the difficulties grow from one school level to another (Diamantopoulos, 2014). Most relate either to writing or
reading and did not seem to focus on the relationship between spelling and writing. Recent studies have dealt with
the speed of writing in connection with spelling errors to investigate the influence of spelling errors in the
production of written speech in students with dyslexia and without dyslexia.

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The results of these studies showed that the dyslexic group faced difficulties on writing due to their indecision in
choosing the right graphemes and many pauses, especially within words. Considering the above research findings,
and the peculiarity of the Greek language in spelling, this study attempts to investigate whether the orthographic
peculiarity of the Greek language combined with the difficulties of dyslexia prevent teenage students in writing
effortlessly and automatically and how they deal with it. This is an area where research is quite limited. The
results of this research revealed that in the writings of students with dyslexia, the “written errors” noticed, are not
expressed as “errors” in the oral domain, since the communication context and the extra-linguistic conditions
cover any lack of the sentence content of the speech. Students’ short- term and working memory deficits cause
difficulties in writing, which requires more speech abstraction than the oral domain. In general, free writing for
students diagnosed with dyslexia is a painful process that they avoid and consider it as a psychopathic condition
for them.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Specific Learning Disabilities
According to DSM-V: “Specific Learning Disorder is a developmental disorder that starts to become apparent in
early school-age, but may not be recognized until later school years. It involves ongoing problems in learning
essential academic skills, including reading, writing and math. However, it is not simply a consequence of lack of
opportunity of learning or inadequate instruction. Key skills that may be impacted include reading of single
words, reading comprehension, writing, spelling, math calculation and math problem solving. Difficulties in these
skills may also cause problems in learning other academic subjects, such as history, science and social studies.
Of course, those problems are attributable to the difficulties in learning the underlying academic skills. Generally,
if not treated, can potentially cause problems throughout a person’s life, including lower academic achievement,
lower self-esteem, higher rates of dropping out of school, higher psychological distress and poor overall mental
health, as well as higher rates of unemployment/under-employment” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013:
68, 69).
Heward (2009) reports that the causes of Specific Learning Disorders/ Dyslexia have been researched:
a) Brain Damage: Some evidence points to the possibility that dyslexia is genetic (Pavlidis, 1981).
b) Heredity: Researchers looking into the role of genetics in dyslexia believe that it can run in families
(Galaburda, 2005).
c) It has been found that the performance of students with learning disabilities in projects of evaluating the short-
term memory is lower than that of children who do not have a problem (Pandeliadou et al., 2004; Karantzis,
1998).
2.2. Categories of errors
As it is referred above, reading problems can include difficulties with reading accuracy, reading rate or fluency,
and reading comprehension.
Problems with written expression can include difficulties with spelling, grammar and punctuation, and with
clarity or organization of written expression. Unfortunately, many children and adolescents who suffer from this
disorder experience considerable humiliation in the classroom.
According to Stasinos (2003), the characteristics of the difficulties and the errors made by the students with
problems in Spelling can be classified into specific categories depending on the species (Lathiri, 2014):
1. Disabilities associated with language:
a) Graphophonemic and Auditory Errors, in particular, these errors may have some visual resemblance to the
correct spelling, but they sound differently when they are read, for example «ζβώλος» instead of «σβώλος».
(Stasinos, 2003).
b) Errors of Letter Replacement, in which the dyslexic students write words such as «κλώσσα» instead of
«γλώσσα», «βολή» instead of «χολή» etc. These errors are due to problems of acoustic perception, hearing or
even acoustic discrimination.
2. Memory-related Disabilities:
a) Optical errors, that sound that are properly, but they are misspelled (Diamantopoulos, 2014).

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The effect of spelling errors on written text production: The case of students with Dyslexia………..

b) Add / Miss out Letter errors that students with phonological memory problems may find it difficult to locate
the dictionary in their memory to render all the vocals (Stasinos, 2003).
c) Serial errors, that is due to problems of organizing the correct sequence or sequencing of the letters of a word
(Lathiri, 2014).
d) Unwanted errors, which neither appear nor sounded properly (Mihailidou, 2012).
3. Difficulties associated with lack of attention:
a) They have a very bad graphic character.
b) Often, they have difficulty of correcting their errors (Mihailidou, 2012).
2.3. Specific Learning Disorder in Secondary School
As graduate students, the dyslexic students moving from Primary Education to Secondary Education are now
confronted with major challenges, given the big change in the school environment and the new teaching
framework. First of all, the changes that a dyslexic student experiences are happening in the knowledge level,
such as comprehensive reading, misspellings, difficulties in copying and text comprehension, organizational
difficulties, poor writing quality, etc (Polychronopoulou, 2012). In addition, they might experience changes in
behavior and Social Relations, such as, low class social status, apathy, aggression, communication and
collaboration problems with peers, low self-confidence etc.
Finally, and the most important of all, are the changes that they experience in the emotional level because of
puberty. Symptoms that he/she might experience are anxiety, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, etc
(Kostopoulou, 2014).
2.3. The oddities of Greek Language
Greek language is a phonetic one. It consists of 24 letters, divided into 7 vowels and 17 consonants and includes
25 phonemes. It also includes digraphs, which are two vowels or two consonants together making one sound,
diphthongs that is two vowels together which sound differently in one syllable. The digraphs represented by two
vowels receive a mark named diaeresis (¨), placed on the second vowel (αϊ), which means that the digraphs should
be pronounced separately. All the words receive an accent mark, except the monosyllabic ones (Pardali, 2002:
60).
There are also combinations of two different vowels which give one sound, but, the same combination can give a
different sound in other occasions, for instance: α+υ=αυ (αβ, av) or α+υ=αυ (αφ, af). That means that some letters
correspond with different phonemes. Another oddity consists of the existence of the double consonants, which
are pronounced like two phonemes but are represented with one letter. In addition, different letters or
combinations of letters are used for the same phoneme, such as /i /, /o/, /e/,/s/ (Pardali, 2002:60). One of its main
characteristics is the multi-syllabication. That means that the Greek language has few monosyllabic words and
many words with two-syllables, three-syllables, four and more. In spite of the existence of few monosyllabic
words, it is interesting to note that they are used quite often, on the grounds that they are grammatical words, like
articles or conjunctions, which keep a significant role in the Greek language (Pardali, 2002:61).
3. Method
The analysis of the data was made according to both qualitative and quantitative processing (mixed method).
Initially, qualitative research was conducted through individual examination which included an analysis of three
different kinds of students' written samples. In a second phase students who participated in this qualitative
research were asked to fill in a questionnaire with closed questions mainly. This paper will focus on the results of
qualitative approach.
3.1. Participants
In the present study, research was conducted to students of Secondary Education in the area of Pella (Edessa,
Greece). More specifically, the participants were high school students attending afternoon tutorials in private
institutions, in order to take an extra help with their homework, in the city of Edessa. The sample consisted of 15
students diagnosed with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) by a Greek, official organization, aged 13-17
(experimental group) and a sample number of 15 regular readers (control group), of the same age, totally 30
participants, during the school year 2016-2017.
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Sample Gender
0%
0%

27%
Αγόρι
Κορίτσι
73%

Sample Age in years

4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5 Ηλικία Δειγμάτων
1
0.5
0

2.3. Instrument
The qualitative research was conducted through individual examination, which included an analysis of three
different kinds of students' written samples. The form and selection of the written samples was based on the
Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (DASH) (Barnett, et al., 2007) and previous research (Summer &
al., 2014, Prunty et al., 2013, Protopapas et al., 2013, Mavroidi, 2011, Operational Program for Education and
Initial Vocational Training, 2010, Pavlidis & Giannouli, 2003).
The informal spelling test included 24 correctly spelled Pseudo-words from these, two were two-syllables, five
three-syllables, nine four-syllables, six four-syllables and one seven-syllable. The syllabic structure of the pseudo-
words was of increasing difficulty (CVCV, CCVCV etc.) (consonants-C and vowels-V) (Diamantopoulos, 2014).
In the spelling test, the assessment trials given to students were four in number, consisting of different tasks each.
In particular, the first task was to choose the right answer within a group of four words that were misspelled on a
paper given to students. (Summer et. al. 2014; Prunty et. al., 2013). The next task was dictation of some words by
the teachers. In the third task of copying some words with timing (copy best & copy fast), the words were
presented on a Compaq Presario CQ62-150EV notebook, with a 17-inch screen. They were presented one after
the other, in the form of increasing difficulty that is, moving from those with the fewest syllables and the simplest
syllabic structure (CVCV) to the ones with the most syllables and the most difficult syllabic structure
(CVCVCCVCV). They were displayed in the center of the screen, on a white background.

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The words were written in lower case characters, black, in Arial font and size 44. For the purposes of this test a
timer was also used. The fourth task was free writing in 10 minutes, without significant compositional
requirements.
3.2. Procedure
For the application of the instrument, the approval of the necessary authorities, in this case of the private
institutions and students’ parents was our priority. Firstly, it was explained to them the intention of the instrument,
the characteristics of it and the utility that the collected data would have for the program and the institution. The
authorities provided the data that allowed the facilitation of the application. The majority of the students agreed to
participate in the present research and answer the instrument. According to the test administration some
classrooms of the private institutions were allocated. The process began with the presentation of the scholar who
welcomed and thanked all participants for participating. Afterwards, the objectives and importance of the study
such as the reliability and privacy of the test results have been explained to the students, clarifying that the results
would be reported in a generalized manner. The duration of the test was approximately an hour.
3.3. Statistical Analysis Procedure
The method used for the errors analysis was Miscue Analysis, adapted to the needs of this study in the
handwritten language. Miscue, in its use, examines the observed behavior of readers as an interaction between
languages and thought, that is, as a process of constructing meaning from the written discourse (Goodman, 1973).
After the completion of the test, the results were decoded by recording on paper and classifying students' errors in
categories. In total, several codes have been studied and categorized, from which five key areas / themes have
emerged:
 word copying time,
 errors in choosing the right answer within a group of misspelled words,
 errors in dictation,
 categorization of spelling errors,
 free writing
3. Results and discussion
From the qualitative analysis of the data of the informal evaluation tests, provided by the 30 students of the
Secondary Education 15participants of each group, experimental and control, regarding the analysis of their errors
in each sector, the following results, emerged: Copying from the blackboard with timing Initially, students from
both groups (experimental and control group) were asked to copy 10 words from the blackboard into a paper. The
teachers were timing the students in this copying task. The table below illustrates in detail, the word copying time
of the two groups from the blackboard.
Table1: Word replication time from blackboard
Experimental Copying vs Control Copying
group time group time
Student 1 3,02 Student 1 1,28
Student 2 2,56 Student 2 1,40
Student 3 3,05 Student 3 1,40
Student 4 2,23 Student 4 1,50
Student 5 2,00 Student 5 1,35
Student 6 2,10 Student 6 1,29
Student 7 2,16 Student 7 1,25
Student 8 2,16 Student 8 1,30
Student 9 2,52 Student 9 1,28
Student 10 3,00 Student10 1,30
Student 11 2,41 Student11 1,46
Student 12 2,17 Student12 1,38
Student 13 2,35 Student13 1,30
Student 3,04 Student14 1,30
Student 2,06 Student15 1,50

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a. Misspelling Words

Image: Sample of dyslexic student errors in diphthongs and in spelling

The above image is taken from a student’s sample of the experimental group. As it seems, there are a lot of
similar errors in students of the experimental group, and these errors were found between the diphthongs and the
spelling of the letters in these syllables. For example, many students in the word «εκσυγχρονισμός» (which means
“modernization") chose the pseudo-word " εξιγχρωνισμός" not being able to realize that the -κσ- is written with
two letters and they were confused with the one letter diphthong –ξ- .
Differences in the number of spelling errors in this exercise are clearly seen by the following pies.
More specifically:

Experimental group Control group errors

errors

c. Errors in dictation of words

According to the findings, the dictation of words was the biggest difference between the two groups, in terms of
the number of errors.
As it is seen in the pie below the percentage of the number of errors in the experimental group, was much higher
than the one’s of the control group. More specifically, of the 150 words, 104 were misspelled, reaching 69.3%.
On the contrary, 46 of the 150 words were correctly spelled (30.7%).

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Percentage of the Experimental group’s dictation errors

Image: Sample of dyslexic student acoustic errors

As can be seen from the above written sample of a student belonging to the experimental group, students' errors
were mainly acoustic, similarity errors, errors in the use of diphthongs, absence of tones, and capitalized writing
between the letters written in lower case.
d. Categories of errors in dictation and copy of the blackboard
Through the observation of the errors of the experimental and the control group it was found that the students
made errors in certain specific categories. These categories were grouped, according to the frequency of the errors
that occurred.
More specifically:
 Numerous errors were encountered in the first category and many times were observed two and three errors in
each word. This was noticed in students' writing samples from the experimental group, especially in the
writing of the two-letter vowels of the words. For example, the words "κοινωνικοποίηση" which means
(“socialization”), "ειλικρίνεια” (which means “sincerity"), "επικοινώνησε” (which means “communicate"), "να
κατακλύσει” (which means “to overwhelm"), were written with many variations in many ways. It seemed that

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the students did not use digraphs (two-letter) vowels, but only one-letter (η,ι,υ) for spelling, which were
obviously easier to remember.
 Another type of errors, was noticed in the use of digraphs, represented by two consonants
(τζ,γκ,μπ,ντ,γχ,κσ,λλ), but to a lesser extent, as the words were few in this category. For example, the words "
αλλοιώνοντας” (“spoiling”), "εγκωμιαστικές κριτικές” (“praise criticism") and "συγχώνευση” (“fusion”) were
written in a variety of ways, as the students barked the consonants and did not know how each word was
written.
 Moreover, there were errors coming from letter visual resemblance, like «γ-χ», «ζ-ξ» in the words
«συγχώνευση» ("merging"), «σύζευξη» ("coupling") and «συγχωρεμένος» ( "forgiven").
As far as the control group is concerned, as it has been seen from the previous section, sample errors were reduced
by half (50%) according to the errors of the experimental group. In this group, it appeared that students' errors had
to do with spelling rules only. They did not confuse the two-letter consonants and vowels, but they often put them
in a wrong place. This is probably because they did not learn correctly the spelling rules and not because of some
kind of confusion.
e. Free writing sample
In the last exercise of the informal test that was administered, the students had to continue/develop a sentence of
the text that they had already been taught, in a paragraph, including 60-80 words within 10 minutes, stating their
point of view.
In the experimental group, in all tests, the same phenomenon was observed. Their “writing sample” had a
similarity to their "spoken sample". To make it clearer, there was no such a formal style that writing process
demands, there were no punctuation points, and the whole writing sample seemed to be sloppy. In addition,
passive voice, which gives an official style to the written discourse, was not used in any written paper.
In addition, the sentences were too long (lengthy speech), which resulted in the loss of meaning in many cases. In
some cases also the period included two sentences and while the subject of the verb of the second sentence
differed from that of the former, this was not stated, resulting in ambiguity and confusion.
At this point, there is also a lack of connection between the sentences and links’ misuse. The image below
presents a written sample of a lengthy speech, with syntactical and spelling errors of a student belonging to the
experimental group and the next image is compared to a written sample of a student belonging to the control
group.

Image: Sample of free writing of a dyslexic student

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Image: Sample of free writing of a non-dyslexic student

4. Conclusions of Qualitative Study
The results compared to the research questions we set out at the beginning were confirmed in many cases.
Initially, and only by the proportion of gender in our sample is confirmed what we found in bibliography, that the
gender ratio of dyslexic students is 4 boys: one girl (Katana & Pavlidis, 2005). Similarly, in our sample we have
15 students, 11 are boys and 4 are girls.
Initially, there appeared to be differences in word replication time between the two groups, which are also found
in Goula’s research (2001). The speed of reading and writing of the experimental group was surprising and
unexpected, while the time that the experimental group needed was significantly higher than the one’s of the
control group. Moreover, it was found that there are differences between the two groups in terms of the number of
errors in the task which they had to choose the correct written words. In particular, dyslexics made a higher
number of errors, compared to the control group, confirming the findings of the bibliographic review.
In addition, as most of the Greek words tend to be multisyllabic, this, in combination with the emphasis points,
makes more difficult the use of the dyslexics’ already limited short-term memory (Pavlidis & Giannouli, 2003).
This is also revealed through our study, as there were lengthy, multisyllabic words and there were much such kind
of errors. What is more, dyslexic readers made many grammar errors, confusing the diphthongs, as the Greek
language has many different vowel combinations, they did not use punctuation, and they could not distinguish
two-letter vowels and lowercase writing. On the contrary, non-dyslexic readers made only few visual and
grammatical errors.
Regarding students' free writing level, there were also differences between the two groups. In particular,
dyslexics’ samples of writing were lengthy, the texts were illegible, there was no logical and temporal sequence
between the sentences and they could not successfully convey their meaning. Consequently, even if they have the
adequate time, the appropriate means and the attention given to the execution of a project, students with specific
learning difficulties usually present texts illegibly (Lerner, 2002).

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