Spelling and Learning of French Plural Markers in Fourth Graders in Luxembourg

Over the last 30 years, many studies have shown that French plural spelling is challenging for learners. The difficulty lies in the fact that, although the plural is regularly marked in written language, there is no audible counterpart in spoken language. Additionally, the correct plural spelling requires more than knowledge of declarative rules. It requires knowledge of the underlying syntactic structures. Plural is part of the curriculum and is taught in the schoolbooks. Nevertheless, even after 1.5 years of French instruction, the students’ spellings still show some deficits that can be improved through syntactic training.
The present dissertation pursued two overarching aims. First, we analyzed the plural spelling of fourth graders in Luxembourg after they had received 1.5 years of French L2 instruction. Second, we wanted to analyze how the learners' performance could be improved through syntactic training. We conducted two studies with a total of 710 students.
In a first study, we inspected 517 students’ spelling on a syntactic spelling test (pretest) after 1.5 years of French L2 instruction. We investigated how proficient and nonproficient plural spellers spelled words from the three word categories nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and whether nonproficient spellers were also able to recognize the plural forms in writing. Furthermore, we wanted to know whether the spelling of noun plural predicted the spelling of verb and adjective plural. Therefore, we analyzed the spelling of the plural forms of real and pseudowords. The results for real words showed that noun plural was spelled best, followed by verb plural, and lastly by adjective plural. For pseudowords, noun plural was also spelled best, but then followed by adjective plural, and lastly by verb plural. The results on plural spelling recognition showed that nonproficient learners were able to recognize noun plural spellings. Our results also showed that the spelling of noun plural indeed predicted the spelling of verb an adjective plural, for both real words and pseudowords.
In a second study, we analyzed how learners’ spelling performance could be improved. To do so, we conducted an intervention study that was part of a larger project by Weth et al. (C18/SC/12675187/GRASP/Weth). A total of 193 students participated in the intervention study for the current dissertation. The experimental group received 2 weeks of syntactic video- based training in French, and the control group received a parallel syntactic video-based training in German. The students were tested at four time points (T1-T4) on a syntactic spelling test (gap dictation). Our results showed that syntactic training focusing on the underlying sentence structure and fostering metalinguistic awareness significantly improved overall spelling performance as well as performance in each word category (nouns, verbs, adjectives).The present dissertation was designed to contribute to existing research by investigating the plural spelling and learning of early L2 French learners in more detail. Furthermore, our findings show the influence of regular instruction in school in the Luxembourgish context (Aim 1) as well as the impact of syntactic training (Aim 2) and provide a basis for further developing training material on French plural spelling.