In contrastive adult literacy, one of the needs is to establish a relation between the stage of acquisition of the learner in two or more languages. As always in contrastive analysis, the question of tertium comparationis arises.
In our paper, we address the question, whether and how far the Spelling Inventory developed by Bear et al. (2020) for English can serve as a reference point for the comparative analysis of spelling in Turkish and in German by adult learners of German as a second language (L2) with Turkish as their first language (L1). The Spelling Inventory captures learners' knowledge of (i) transparent phoneme-grapheme correspondences (alphabetic layer), (ii) knowledge of letter patterns and syllable structures (pattern layer), e.g., consonant clustering and vowel lengthening, and (iii) knowledge of the meaning of morphemes (meaning layer), e.g., inflectional and derivational morphemes. It is progressive in nature and encompasses the major developmental stages in orthographic acquisition (e.g., Frith 1986; Günther 1995). The words to be dictated are selected to contain features typical of the respective layers, and the correct realization of these features is also rewarded.
To assess orthographic knowledge in the L2, we used an adaptation of the Spelling Inventory by Bear et al. (2020) for German (Do Manh et al. 2021), and for the L1 Turkish we developed a comparable inventory of 30 words. Both inventories were administered to 20 adult participants in contrastively designed literacy courses on two different days. In this presentation, we focus on the Turkish Spelling Inventory, but learners' writing development will be discussed based on the two orthographic systems.
A particular challenge in this context is the question of how to deal with transfer between orthographic representations. (Experimental) spellings within the matrix of the respective other orthographic system, as they were found in children in heritage language classrooms (cf. Schroeder 2020, Maas & Mehlem 2003), show the use of orthographic knowledge – however in the "wrong" language. We will discuss, whether and how such phenomena can be included in the Spelling Inventory analysis in a way that is appropriate for the target group.
