Week 5: Writing & Orthography

The reading for this week is mainly focused on writing system. I would think it is a good idea to read Finegan first and then Freeman, because Finegan mainly talks about the writing systems, which is in general while Freeman & Freeman have gone deeper notions about English orthography, which is more specific. In Finegan textbook, three types of writing system are referred and they are a syllabic writing, a logographic writing, and an alphabetic writing. In syllabic writing system the written symbols represent whole syllables, such as cuneiform writing system, and the logographic graphic symbols represent words or morphemes, such as Chinese logographic system while the alphabetic graphs represent sounds or phonemes, such as Roman alphabet.

English is one of many languages which use the Roman alphabetic graphs to represent its writing letters. However, English orthography does not have close correspondence between letters and phonemes. English has twenty-six written Roman letters but it has at least thirty-six sounds. Due to the shortage of the letters, some phonemes must be presented by a combination of letters. For example, the letters “th” represent the phoneme /ɵ/. Hence, this causes confusion. In the textbook, Freeman & Freeman reach several implications of teaching reading, playing games to help students become more aware of graphotactics, exposing students read extensively, teaching the history of English language, improving students’ ability to recognize combinations of English letters, helping students understand the spelling system is logical and does follow rules, helping student investigate how the spelling system works, and involving students in linguistic investigations.