Abstract
Fourth standard students (8–10 years old) learning Hindi as an additional language played a mobile game that teaches children to identify complex akshara (akshara that contain at least two consonant components) and spell words that contain complex akshara. We analyzed the game data to identify aspects of both akshara and words that are challenging to students. We replicated some findings from previous studies: (1) students struggle with complex akshara that look different than their components (i.e., opaque complex akshara); (2) they struggle with akshara that have a nonlinear arrangement of components; and (3) they struggle to spell words when there is a mismatch between the orthographic and phonological syllable. Because we had more stimuli than previous studies, we were able to examine finer comparisons in opacity and linearity. Furthermore, we were the first to identify that students make rampant phonological errors specifically on aspirated consonants, which are relatively rare in Hindi.
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Notes
As reported in Bhide et al. (2019), students played the massed version faster, so more students in that group reached the higher levels of the game.
All models were fit in R using the glmmTMB package.
There were four words in which the final consonant cluster was not followed by a schwa but the consonant cluster was not listed as legal coda in Kachru (2006).
However, because the native speaker who did our recordings pronounced the cluster as a blend, we coded it as a blend.Post-hoc analyses were conducted by running separate models for each group. The models were the same as the overall models but with the spacing variable removed. Note that for the distributed group we also had to remove two of the random slopes (number of akshara and retroflexion by subject) to achieve convergence.
However, because the native speaker who did our recordings pronounced the cluster as a blend, we coded it as a blend.References
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Funding
This research was supported by NSF PSLC [Grant SBE08-36012] and the Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship awarded to AB.
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Bhide, A., Perfetti, C.A., Luo, W. et al. Spelling Challenges in Hindi. Psychol Stud 66, 390–407 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-021-00625-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-021-00625-8