Investigating Japanese EFL Learner's Spelling Acquisition With Implicational Scaling

Abstract

The purposes of the present study are (a) to investigate the spelling acquisition among Japanese high school students using various spelling tests and (b) to verify the acquisition order of English spelling with implicational scaling by comparing spelling test performance. The study employed five types of spelling tests, namely story form, timed dictation, list form, multiple-choice, and matching task. Statistical differences among five test scores indicated that the production type tests (i.e., story form, timed dictation, and list form) were more difficult compared to the recognition type tests (i.e., multiple-choice and matching task), which was in consistency with the previous studies. To verify whether the difficulty of spelling tests reflects the learner's acquisition order of English spelling, the statistical method called implicational scaling was utilized for the analysis. The results showed that this method was beneficial for understanding acquisition order of English spelling ability among EFL learners.