Students' Difficulties in Spelling Vowels: Case Study

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect the difficulties students have in spelling the vowels of the Albanian language. The unified spelling of a language, in our case the Albanian language, is an expression of the crystallization of the national literary norm in all the main links of the phonetic, grammatical, word-forming and lexical structure. It reflects the current state and general trends of the development of our literary language. Given that the basic principle of Albanian spelling is the phonetic principle and seeing the constant spelling errors of Albanian speakers in the use of vowels, we conducted research with primary school students in rural areas, to see the most common errors frequency in vowel spelling. Our goal was to see the differences between students whose parents have primary education and those with higher education. Through this research we have also seen the reasons that lead to the impossibility of writing correctly and how the vowels should be written in different words. Our hypothesis is that children of parents with primary education make more mistakes in vowel spelling than children of parents with high education. We have conducted the research through the theoretical, comparative method, distribution of questionnaires and data analysis. The results have shown that parents' education does not affect children's knowledge of spelling.

Received: 27 August 2024 / Accepted: 28 October 2024 / Published: 05 November 2024