The “Sound of Silence”: Sensitivity to Silent Letters in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate general spelling difficulties. This study investigated accuracy on and sensitivity to silent letters in spelling in children with and without DLD. Investigating silent-letter production provides a window into orthographic and morphological knowledge and enhances understanding of children's spelling skills. Method A group of children with DLD ( M age = 9;11 [years;months]) and two control groups of typically developing children ( n = 30 in each group) were given a dictated spelling task of 44 words that each contained a derivational or a nonderivational silent letter. We coded the silent letter in each word and counted 1 point for each correctly spelled letter in order to examine accuracy on silent letters. Two error patterns were distinguished to analyze sensitivity to silent letters: silent-letter substitutions and silent-letter omissions. Results Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that children with DLD produced significantly more errors on silent letters than did both control groups. Both control groups showed a greater sensitivity to silent-letter endings, as they tended to substitute incorrect silent letters where they made errors. In contrast, children with DLD tended to omit silent letters in their spelling attempts. Conclusions Our results suggest that silent-letter production is a major source of difficulty for spellers, especially for those with DLD, who appear to lack sensitivity to silent letters. These results highlight the importance of promoting spelling instruction to enhance orthographic knowledge in children with DLD.

How to pronounce silent letters in English and French

According to the Law on Education, the National Training Program, new educational institutions have been built, and the existing ones have been reconstructed and repaired in accordance with modern standards. In the framework of the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On Education" and the National Program of Personnel Training, a comprehensive system of teaching foreign languages, is the formation of a harmoniously developed, educated, modern-minded young generation , a system aimed at further integration of the republic into the world community has been created. Silent letter is part of a word that written but not spoken. Silent letter can sometimes join with other letters to form part of a word. Silent letters exist in many English words and French words as well. Because of this, they often cause confusion and sometimes embarrassment when they are accidentally spoken.One of the reasons why silent letters are used in English, French and some other languages relates to following. During the formation evolution of English and French many foreign words were assimilated or absorbed in the language in Latin ,Germanic , Greek words were readily added to early English and French as was the spelling. All natural languages change and because they change, they have histories. Every language changes in different ways, so their histories are unique and different. The history of a given language is the description of how it has changed over time.

Test of the Phonological Recoding Hypothesis Using a Letter-Delay Task

In some English words is a silent letter in the letter strings, e.g., PSALM, This type of word provides room to manipulate phonological similarity against the words with a nonsilent letter in the corresponding position, e.g., PASTA, to test the phonological recoding hypothesis. Letter strings excluding the silent letter or the sounding letter, e.g., _salm and a phonological condition, _asta as an orthographic condition, were presented. A “psalm-type word” was processed faster than “pasta-type word,” indicating that phonology plays a leading role in word recognition.