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In:Early Language Education in Instructed Contexts: Current issues and empirical insights into teaching and learning languages in primary school
Edited by Stefanie Frisch and Karen Glaser
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 62] 2025
► pp. 140–159

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Chapter 7
Faktör — factoure — facteure?

The development of French vowel spelling in a German-French bilingual primary school

 | Leipzig University
 | University of Luxembourg
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 22 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.62.07lor
Abstract
The present study investigates how primary school children whose first language of literacy is German acquire vowel spelling in French as a second writing system. The paper distinguishes the children’s vowel spelling in three vowel groups: vowels that are phonologically and graphematically identical in French and German; vowels that are phonologically but not graphematically identical in both languages; and vowels that exist only in French. In this longitudinal study, we used dictations to collect French vowel spellings from students in Grade 2 to Grade 4 in a bilingual school in Germany. The results indicate that the influence of the first writing system is largest at the beginning of the acquisition process for all vowel spellings and that children tend to spell French vowels differently depending on the phonological and graphematic similarities and differences between German and French. The results are discussed in the framework of spelling research in biliterate contexts as well as in the educational context of primary school.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Graphematic solution space
    • 2.2Learner languages
    • 2.3Written learner languages
  • 3.Research aims, participants, and methodology
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Participants and language instructional setting
    • 3.3Methodology
      • 3.3.1Test material and data collection
      • 3.3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The spelling of French vowels with respect to similarities
      and differences in the first writing system German
      • 4.1.1Spelling solutions in the vowel group F==G
      • 4.1.2Spelling solutions in the vowel group F=≠G
      • 4.1.3Spelling solutions in the vowel group F≠≠G
    • 4.2The longitudinal development of the spelling of French vowels
      from Grade 2 to Grade 4 with respect to similarities and differences
      in the first writing system German
      • 4.2.1The longitudinal development of spellings in vowel group F==G
      • 4.2.2The longitudinal development of spellings in vowel group F=≠G
      • 4.2.3The longitudinal development of spellings in vowel group F≠≠G
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion: Implications for early language teaching and future research
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
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