About

The starting point of our research is that all language structures, be they oral or written, formal or informal, are acquired within social practices, and, hence, are learnt structures.

With this stance, our research aims to advance the understanding of:

• the linguistic forms of writing systems and their models,
• the sublexical orthographic processing required for spelling,
• the methods of teaching and learning to write including the development of pedagogic materials, and
• the social practices and ideologies underpinning spelling and spelling acquisition.

Although the four research lines overlap, each line has its individual objectives and methods and is related to single research projects.

Linguistic forms of writing systems and their models

This line analyzes written forms in two or more given writing systems in order to better understand the form-function relationships within one writing system and across different languages and writing systems. The main languages and writing systems are: German, French, Portuguese and Luxembourgish.

Research and publications (selection):

• Weth, C., Dording, C., Klasen, L., Fayol, M., Funke, R., & Ugen, S. (2024). Effects of parallel syntactic training in French plural spelling and German noun capitalization. Morphology, 34(2), 189–217.
• Weth, C., & Wollschläger, R. (2020). Spelling patterns of German 4th graders in French vowels: Insights into spelling solutions within and across two alphabetic writing systems. Writing Systems Research, 11(2), 1–18.

Sublexical orthographic processing required for spelling

This line aims to understand spelling acquisition and learning at lexical and sublexical level in different conditions of productions.

Research projects (selection):

• Establishing an error-annotated learner corpus of German, French as school languages in Luxembourg at Grade 5 and Grade 6, and Portuguese as a heritage language. Literacy Acquisition in School in the context of Luxembourg (LAS-PLux)
• Effects of Grammatical Reflection on Spelling among multilingual pupils (GRASP)

Methods of teaching and learning

Development of teaching materials that combine spelling and grammar instruction for children in pre- and primary school. All teaching materials were tested in the intervention studies.

• Weth, C. (2017). Bausteng Grammatik (1st ed.). Ministère de l’Education nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse / Université du Luxembourg.

Social practices and ideologies underpinning writing systems and spelling

This line explores the social meaning of orthography and spelling in bi- or multilingual contexts.

• Weth, C., Böhm, M., & Bunčić, D. (2020). Literacies in contact. Forms, functions, and practices. Written Language & Literacy, 23(2), 133–153.