Acquisizione dell'ortografia in L2: due ortografie europee a confronto

This paper wants to shed some light on the acquisition of orthographic knowledge in L2. So far, this part of L2 linguistic competence has been rather neglected by linguists, at least for the Italian and German spelling systems focussed on here. We show that the acquisition of a new spelling system does not develop along the same pathways found in the first language alphabetisation. This is the result of the analysis of Italian students’ spelling errors in L2 German dictation. The traditional classifications of spelling errors in German follow the acquisition model worked out for German-speaking children and based on different writing strategies. As these classifications do not suit the variability of errors we observe in L2 learners, we want to propose a new classification based on the different parts making up the complex spelling process, according to our own process model.