French and Arabic spelling in typical and specific learning disorder bilingual children in primary grades

Spelling performances in Lebanese bilingual children with typical development (TD) and presenting a Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) is a field little exploited in the literature. Our objective is to study the development of the spelling performances in bilingual French- speaking Lebanese TD and SLD children, in primary grades: Grade 2, 3, and 4. Ninety TD children and ninety SLD children were recruited. The evaluation of their spelling skills was done through sentences dictations in French and Arabic. The results mainly show that the performances of TD children are superior to that of SLD children in terms of accuracy and speed of processing. However, these results are nuanced as to the percentages of errors (usage, phonetic, grammatical, and segmentation errors) according to each grade level. These results are discussed regarding Lebanese educational programs for better management of written language impairments in therapy sessions and at school.