Spell new sounds with new letters: A study of how Swedish L2 learners’ spelling is affected by their L1

The current study examines whether there is a connection between Swedish L2 students' L1 and their spelling in Swedish.The data were collected through a spelling test conducted at SFI course levels C and D. The experiment was conducted in an urban area in Småland in three groups consisting of 37 course participants with 12 different L1s. People with Arabic as their L1 are the focus of the study due to the selection. The results show that the spelling mistakes could to some extent be explained by the Arabic phoneme set. For example, consonant pairs were confused to a greater extent when one of the consonants was not in Arabic (i.e. p/b, k/g, v/f) than when both consonants in the pair are in Arabic (i.e. t/d, r/l). A comparison was also made between the total number of spelling errors among the participants with an L1 written in the Latin alphabet (i.e. the same as Swedish) and those with an L1written in a different writing system. The results showed that more vowel errors were made among those who used a written language other than the Latin alphabet. However, the two groups made an equal proportion of consonant errors.