Which skills underlie French-speaking children’s lexical spelling acquisition in elementary school? Insight from a cross-sectional exploratory network study from Grade 1 to Grade 5

Learning to spell in an inconsistent orthographic system is a true challenge for primary school children. Previous empirical studies have highlighted three main skills involved in this learning process: phonological skills, morphological skills, and children’s sensitivity to graphotactic regularities. However, the literature shows contradictions in the exact nature of the contribution of each skill at different stages of the learning process. So, the aim of our study was to test the contribution of this set of skills in the acquisition of lexical spelling as a function of children’s grade level. For this purpose, we assessed these dimensions in a cross-sectional sample of 1101 French-speaking children from Grade 1 to Grade 5. The analyses were conducted using data-driven exploratory network modeling. The results showed (a) a predominant role of phonological skills at the beginning of learning, which tends to decrease with advancing schooling; (b) an increasing contribution of morphological skills from Grade 1 to Grade 5 with a drop in Grade 4, which is the only contribution that continues to increase in Grade 5; and (c) a contribution of the sensitivity to graphotactic regularities that tends to be stable until Grade 4 before decreasing in Grade 5. Our findings show the importance of all three skills in a dynamic process in learning to spell. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the integration of multiple patterns model of learning to spell.