Spelling competence is a component of language competence, which in turn constitutes one of the fundamental building blocks of communicative competence, a prerequisite for successful communication. It begins to develop systematically when children enter school. The present study examines spelling competence through an analysis of written compositions produced by a randomly selected sample of third-grade pupils. The Slovenian primary school curriculum for the subject Slovene (Poznanovič et al. 2018) specifies in detail the operational objectives that pupils are expected to achieve during each educational period. However, studies examining the extent to which pupils have acquired spelling competence remain scarce. By analysing selected third-grade compositions, the aim of this study is to draw the attention of (prospective) primary school teachers to the most common spelling deficiencies demonstrated by third-grade pupils when writing compositions. The most frequent difficulties are related to the spelling of words containing critical phonemes. The second least successfully acquired objective concerns the correct use of capital letters at the beginning of sentences, while incorrect writing of prepositions together with the following word is also common. Instances of failing to achieve other spelling objectives occur considerably less frequently.
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