The aim of this study was to evaluate the spelling and morphosyntactic awareness in a sample of 224 schooled adolescents and adults. Participants were tested in a task of dictations of words and pseudowords, judgment of written words and analogy of words (both with justification) elaborated with grammatical and lexical morphemes that presents competition in the graphical representation of the fonemes / s / and / z /. The results showed significant differences between the morphemes grammatical and lexical, suggesting that these orthographic principles are not attained likewise. It was not also observed the use of generative principles, though it is possible to observe an evolution in the orthographic performance and in the type of justifications used at the end of primary and secondary education. A predictive effect of explicit knowledge about the orthographic performance in spelling words and pseudowords was also observed. It is concluded that even in the most advanced levels of schooling there is still difficulty in explicit aware of the orthographic principles.
morphosyntactic awareness; spelling; adolescents and adults