French is a relatively regular language with a transparent orthography for reading and less transparent for spelling (just as Greek). This means that for reading  there is only one possible phoneme associated with a certain grapheme (GFC), whereas for spelling, the rules are less consistent. These means that one phoneme can be spelled in many ways.
                French differs form English, in that the second is a language with close syllables ( where the word has a certain phonetic independence in a sentence because it has its own stress) and the first one has open syllables (stress occurs within a group of words). Also, in French a word is sensitive to contextual influences: the final consonant of a word is generally pronounced with the initial vowel of the following word. Therefore, the graphic space used as a boundary for written words many not be congruent with an audible way (this has an influence in the opaque spelling). (Bruck et al., 1997).
                In sum, the GPC is highly regular, whereas the PGC are less predictable (that explains the opaque spelling as well).
                French-speaking children mainly use phonological mediation at the beginning of reading and spelling acquisition. Phonological process operates sole in this early stage of reading and spelling. Orthographic lexicon is quickly constructed: at the end of the first grade, words were better read than pseudowords, and frequency had an impact on the reading and spelling. So, at the beginning there is not such a thing as logographic or orthographic stage. (Sprenger-Charolles & Siegel 1997).
                Phonological mediation  allows the construction of the orthographic lexicon (visual recognition of patterns). That's why early phonological decoding skills were predictive of later reading and spelling performance but not the reverse. Phonological mediation permits processing of all regular words, known or unknown, as well as words that do not exist. Children can learn progressively some rare correspondences (irregular words). (Sprenger-Charolles & Siegel 1997).
                Even when the direct-matching route between a word and the orthographic lexicon is functional, children may still use phonological mediation, which becomes more and more automatic as the associations permitting the establishment of the GPC are reinforced (Perfetti, 1995).
                In spelling, unlike reading, the oral lexicon is not of great help. This is due to the asymmetry of the PG and GF correspondences. Whereas only one reading is possible for a word, it could be spelled correctly, according to the phonological rules, in many ways. Thus, the orthographic procedure develops later in spelling than in reading.
                The "opaque spelling" of French, as it is in Greek, can be easily deduced from consistent rules, what at the long end, makes of these relatively transparent and regular languages.

Glossary

        GFC/ GF: grapheme-phoneme correspondences

        PGF/ PG: phoneme- grapheme correspondence
 

                                                                                                                                              
             Home                                                                                                              English                German