Running Head: LEARNER CHALLENGES: SPANISH PHONOLOGY 1
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan
Phonology and The Influence of Spelling on Pronunciation
Angela Carney Alcerro
May 26, 2014
EDUC 571, Section 27758
Dr. Shelly Baseri
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 2
Introduction and rationale
The aspect I wish to analyze is Phonology, specifically, the
influence of spelling on pronunciation. Unlike English or French,
the Spanish orthographic system is almost completely transparent
in its ability to express sound symbol relationships (Mackenzie,
1993). My rationale is that the difference in orthographies
(Spanish / shallow, English / deep) creates learner challenges.
This is not limited to native Spanish speakers acquiring English.
In a study on the impact of orthographic consistency in
acquisition of reading skills of both German and English
children, English children were found to have a more difficult
time in reading (Landerl, 1997). Since Spanish has a shallow
orthography, words are spelled as they sound, so when
transferring to English, learners tend to pronounce English words
letter by letter. Catalan speakers (deeper orthography) do not
have the same challenges. Although Spanish and English consonant
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 3systems have many similarities, the vowel systems and stress
within the sentence differ substantially, causing difficulty for
native Spanish speakers in learning English. European Spanish
speakers seem to find the stress variation most difficult.
Catalan speakers experience less difficulty since they have a
broader range of vowels and stress in sentences. So, the exposure
to a variety of stress systems within sentences does seem to
contribute to an easier time in learning to pronounce and
ultimately spell English. Vowels are another area that
contributes to the inability of one-to-one correspondence.
Generally, two English vowels will share phonetic space with one
vowel in Spanish and Catalan (Smith, 2001). This investigation of
phonology and its influence on spelling and resulting challenges
for the native Spanish speaking learner of English will include a
linguistic analysis of the specific differences between the L1
and English, the anticipated challenges, and a discussion of
difficulties I have experienced working with learners from this
L1 background. I will follow up with suggestions for addressing
these challenges within a classroom setting as well as options
for multigenerational learning.
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 4Differences between Spanish, Catalan and English in Spelling and
Phonology.
Spanish has a high correspondence between sounds and
spelling, making English spelling a challenge. Catalan is nearly
as complex as English, so spelling English comes easier. Spanish
and Catalan speakers will tend to pronounce all letters if they
do not know the word. Here are a few examples: asked is
pronounced asket, answer is pronounced answer with the w and r
being pronounced, friend, i and e pronounced separately while
dropping the final d. The rolled or flapped r is pronounced wherever
it is written, interrupting following consonants such as learn,
farm, four or bar. The double ll has regional variations in Spanish
that will tend to be carried over when Spanish speakers encounter
unknown English words with ll. Other sounds that beginners may
carry over from their L1 are j that in English is a voiceless
velar fricative, so that words like jam may sound like ham to
speakers of English (Smith, 2001).
Both groups will tend to use one consonant. This presents
some issues in spelling English words with double consonants
resulting in words written with only one consonant, such as:
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 5apear*, diferent*, necesary*, forgoten*. What complicates this
further is that Spanish/Catalan L1 English learners do not
usually distinguish contrasts in English phonemes and therefore
are not able to take advantage of sound spelling regularities
that do actually exist. This can cause confusion in words like
hoping and hopping and this and these. There are other regularities
in English, patterns such as two vowels and one consonant or one
vowel and two consonants which an English learner could miss
resulting in misspellings like *breack, *crak, and *shouting
(Smith, 2001).
Written contractions do not exist in the same way they do in
English in either Spanish or Catalan. Contractions like I’d come
earlier if I were you, or I’ll be there, are challenging for them to find
would and will in these examples. Instead they may say I come or
they help which is understandable but not natural. Early learners
are reluctant to use contractions, and in my experience, if they
have had even the minimal English instruction in their countries,
tend to equate contractions with substandard English. However,
once they get more experienced in using them, they may even
overuse them (Smith, 2001).
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 6
Punctuation in Spanish and Catalan are similar to English
with a few exceptions such as the inverted question and
exclamation marks and inverting the comma and period use for
decimals and thousands, though this is done in Europe, not only
Spanish speaking countries. Spanish and Catalan do not capitalize
first letters for national adjectives, days of the week or months
as is done in English. These differences are fairly minor and
learned easily if care is taken in writing (Corpus del Español,
2014).
Rhythm and stress: European Spanish does not have a great
deal of difference between stressed and unstressed syllables,
whereas Catalan is more stress timed, though not as exaggerated
as English. "j" is pronounced "y" and vice versa, also "sh" is
highly challenging for a Spanish or Catalan speaker to pronounce,
they usually pronounce it "ch". Consonant clusters: These can be
very challenging because they are not frequent in Spanish and
Catalan (Smith, 2001).
Anticipated challenges in Spelling and Phonology
The major difficulties I anticipate in English spelling are
that every letter is sounded out, including rolled r, the
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 7reluctance to use contractions, placing "e" before consonant
clusters such as "speak", and inversion of "y" and "j", "ch"
instead of "sh". As the English learner is exposed to more spoken
English, there should be less of a need to sound out as the
student will have a larger resource of known words. Contractions
also will become more natural with experience with spoken English
(smith, 2001). However, the placing of e before consonant
clusters requires some investigation as to why that occurs.
Consonant clusters are not common in Spanish and Catalan, so it
is more a lack of awareness leading to difficulty in noticing and
then producing consonant clusters in English. This leads to
results such as espres for express, istan for instant, brefas for
breakfast for example. More importantly to know from an
instructor’s perspective is that s plus another consonant never
occurs in Spanish or Catalan, so instead of Spain, skeptic and stop,
the result can be Espain, eskeptic and estop. Rhythm, stress and
intonation can be highly challenging for Spanish and Catalan L1
speakers, especially European Spanish speakers who tend to have a
narrower pitch. Spanish is a syllable-timed language, so to an
English ear, all syllables may sound as if they have the same
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 8stress (Smith, 2001). This is not as prevalent with Latin
American Spanish that has more tonal variance (Mackenzie, 1993).
In English, the stress changes depending on the message and what
is being emphasized while in Spanish and Catalan, stress is
usually at the end of the sentence. This makes reading aloud or
speaking in public a challenge and worthy of extra coaching. More
difficult still is reading in English, especially if the Spanish
speaker had been monolingual prior to learning English. If the
Spanish native speaker had studied even a related language such
as Portuguese or French, reading and spelling in English would
have probably been easier (Smith, 2001).
Difficulties experienced
Difficulties I have experienced are reliance on false
cognates to the point of fossilization, pronouncing letter by
letter that slows down reading, and challenges with spelling with
English. Catalan speakers have experience with a deep orthography
like English, so the adaptation is not as challenging. The
reliance of false cognates may stem from a desire to benefit from
the prior knowledge of latin-based words such as structure, derive,
difficult, confusion. While this gives learners access to a large
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 9vocabulary, it does make one sound more formal than the intention
may be. There are also false cognates that can cause a breakdown
in communication, especially if allowed to fossilize: caravana –
traffic jam, embarazada – pregnant, propaganda – advertizing, sensible – sensitive
(Smith, 2001). The pronunciation of words letter by letter again
needs to be addressed through exposure to spoken and written
English prior to any opportunity for fossilization, because at
that point, reading for pleasure or information could become slow
and unproductive and ultimately frustrating. Challenges with
spelling are mainly because of the difference in depth of
orthographies of the languages, but I have seen them be overcome
through regular reading of quality material. Since there is a
wealth of quality literature in Spanish, a good translation, Don
Quixote for children for example, meant for younger learners,
perhaps from a dual immersion program has been shown to be
useful, moving on to translations of the original text as the
student advances. Since the story is already familiar, the
student can activate prior knowledge that will help with
motivation. I do feel that more crucial than mechanical
challenges, in my experience, keeping students motivated and
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 10encouraged goes a long way towards achieving the goal of
acquisition of English. I am inspired by Krashen’s theory of
second language acquisition; the natural order, monitor, input
and affective filter hypothesis (Krashen, 1982). Possessing or
not possessing the command of English in many of the students’
countries of origin has been a lifelong judgment on one’s
education level and social class that has led to lowered self-
esteem and expectations (Rubdy, 2009). If a student is coming to
an ESL class as an adult, it is possible that many issues
contribute to a loss of motivation, so it is important to address
those issues as well by creating a welcoming classroom
environment that is inclusive with high expectations and support
for achievement. Other challenges I have witnessed are in some
children of those learning English with regards to early reading
challenges. This can get misdiagnosed and is at times
misunderstood by teachers who are not informed about the
challenges specific to Spanish and Catalan speaking English
learners. In many cultures throughout the world, multilingualism
is natural and not given too much attention, neither positive nor
negative. Those who are able, usually start English instruction
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 11early (Curzan, 2011).
Suggestions for how to address these challenges in the ESL/EFL
classroom
As for suggestions in the classroom, depending on the
situation, I would like to consider a multigenerational approach.
With regards to adult learners, I feel that showing examples in a
dialect of Spanish such as Catalan is worth trying. Catalan has
enough similarities with Spanish to access prior knowledge while
also possessing aspects that are similar to English such as
stress and deeper orthography. It also acknowledges the richness
of the Iberian culture. This could act as a bridge to learning
English that I find fascinating, because one could say it was
there all along. Adult learners have not had the advantage of a
bilingual education with English, or they would not be in an ELL
classroom setting. I have seen firsthand the advantages of a dual
immersion approach and while that is not possible with adult
learners, some techniques could be modified. For example,
students could watch a newscast in their own language either in
class or at home and then in class, watch the same topic covered
in English. This way the content is internalized and the students
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 12then start to build the matching vocabulary. Preloading key
vocabulary words prior to viewing the broadcast would also be
helpful.
Native Spanish speaking learners of English have concerns
about their children’s education that I have thought of how to
address as well (Anderson-Levitt, 2005). I am interested in
learning more about the possibilities of the Montessori early
reading method for use with younger English language learners
with Spanish as their L1. I interviewed a Nancy Schwab, a
Montessori school superintendent who had developed over the last
30 years an early reading program that in many cases has been
able to intervene students at risk for dyslexia. She learned
while living in Italy that children who speak languages with
shallow orthographies (Spanish and Italian) rarely develop
dyslexia even if they have the genetic markers, but that if those
genetic markers exist in an English speaking student, chances are
high that dyslexia will surface (Nancy Schwab, personal
communication, May, 2006) (Fidler, 2004). Her method includes
starting with Spanish and "mapping" shapes with a particular
starting sound. Her method was later evaluated by a professor at
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 13Wittenberg University in Ohio with 4 control groups and found
that both children taught in Montessori and those taught in
public school using the same reading method had similar results
(See Appendix A). The reading method is now being used in EFL and
dual immersion programs in a Montesorri Sierra Madre school in
Monterey, Mexico (About Us, 2014). My interest is in
possibilities for early intervention in preschool or at home with
Spanish L1 to help in reading English prior to starting school,
to avoid potential problems with dyslexia that may surface when
they encounter English due to major differences in the depth of
orthographies.
Conclusion
Native Spanish and Catalan speakers encounter many
challenges when learning English that are complicated by the
difference in the depth of their respective orthographies, but
they are not insurmountable. Catalan may be an exquisite tool to
use to bridge knowledge between the Spanish and English because
of its similarities with Spanish in pronunciation and with
English through its deeper orthography. While there are major
differences in spelling, intonation, stress and vowel/consonant
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 14patterns, with consistent deliberate exposure to both spoken and
written English as well as focused effort in reading will render
the gift of English for Spanish and Catalan speakers as a vehicle
for inclusion and international communication, allowing for equal
participation in technology and emerging developments. There are
many areas of complexity and challenge in learning a language.
This analysis focused on phonology and its influence on spelling
and its resulting challenges for Spanish and Catalan speakers in
learning English. By taking a multigenerational approach to the
problem, spelling difficulties do not need to become an issue for
future generations relating to this difference in orthographies.
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 15
Appendix A – Evaluation of The Nightingale Montessori Pre-Primary
Reading Program
Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 17
References
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Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 18Key strengths - sound shapes precision phonics™ - a montessori-
based reading program. (n.d.).
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Learner Challenges: Spanish and Catalan phonology: Spelling and pronunciation 19In Journal of the Simplified
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