This study examines the effectiveness of the intentional misspelling task in predicting 2nd and 4th graders' orthographic knowledge. The intentional misspelling task consists in the intentional spelling mistakes made by children in their written production. Therefore it is possible to evaluate children's orthographic knowledge since some knowledge of the orthographic rules is necessary to make intentional spelling mistakes. Three spelling rules in Brazilian Portuguese were investigated: a morphosyntactic rule (the use of the suffixes esa, oso and eza) and two contextual rules (the use of R and RR; the nasalization before consonants). The results indicated that schooling is related both to children's spelling skills and to their competence in making intentional spelling errors. On the other hand, the intentional misspelling task gives us useful information about children's orthographic knowledge in the orthographic contexts they consider to be problematic.
intentional misspelling; orthography; writing
