Introduction: The Orthography of French

An introduction to essays in a special thematic section of L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature titled "Problems in Orthography: Contributions from Research in French" provides extensive summaries of the contents of all four contributions & evaluates the significance of the findings of each study for the development of a problem-solving approach that will bridge the interface between the pedagogy of French orthography & theoretical approaches to the linguistics of writing & the psycholinguistics of literacy & create a fruitful heuristic relationship between theory & application. In the case of psycholinguistics, U. Frith's (1985) model of orthography acquisition via phonographic competency is shown to pertain to the initial stages of literacy in French, as it must soon be supplemented by the capacity for semiographic reanalysis of phonography, given the importance of nonphonographic units in the writing systems of French & English. 24 References. J. Hitchcock