Beauriful harts or beautiful hearts: linguistic pattern analysis of misspellings of Arab EFL writers

In the era of spell-checks and autocorrection, the prescriptive question of a child’s ability to spell has started to fizzle out, and many schools began to call off formal spelling instruction. This ideological and educational reform has resulted in changing spelling patterns and features. Informed by the triple-word-form theory of spelling development, this mixed-methods study analyzed English misspellings by Arab writers using the Phonological, Orthographic, and Morphological Analysis System (POMAS), a framework that has not been previously applied in this context. Ninety-four academic essays were examined, with misspellings first categorized—phonological, orthographic, or morphological—and then analyzed for linguistic patterns (e.g. epenthesis, syncope, voicing, etc.). The frequency analysis showed that orthographic errors (e.g. whith/with) were predominant (making up 68% of total errors) and mostly occurred in high-frequency words in General American English. The deep pattern analysis, however, showed (1) reduction of vowel digraphs, (2) omission of short vowels, and (3) fluctuations in silent letters, voiced-voiceless pairs, and ambiguous letters—features either absent or only partially present in learners’ L1 (diglottic Arabic). We discuss these findings in relation to participants’ L1 background and state of spelling ability, followed by some educational implications.