Orthographic Knowledge, Phonological Awareness and the Teaching of English: an Analysis of Word Dictation Errors in English of Malaysian Secondary School Pupils

Abstract

This paper is a case study of the written errors in English on a single word dictation test produced in one first year secondary class from a Malaysian secondary school. The analysis attempts to see if the errors produced by the children can be understood in terms of reading acquisition processes in use for teaching reading in BM or in terms of interference problems caused by the differing phonological systems of local languages spoken by the children, or in terms of systematic differences between the variety of English spoken in Malaysia and Singapore, (EMS) and RP. In particular, the paper looks at the effects of final consonant cluster written errors in situations were the final consonant is either a morphological suffix or is part of the root word. The paper then discusses the pedagogical implications of the findings.