The initial development of spelling in Spanish: From global to analytical

During a school year, samples of words written by three groups of children of successive ages were collected. Two groups of children were in first and second year of Kindergarten (4 and 5 years of age), when alphabetic rules were not taught in a systematic way. The third group was in first year of Primary School (6 years of age), and was being taught to read and spell in a systematic way. After classifying the words written by the children, seven categories of spelling were obtained, which may represent different stages in their learning process. Their analysis showed that they are related to different types of knowledge and processes, mainly phonological ones. The results show that the development of spelling in Spanish does not qualitatively differ from that of children who learn to spell in opaque writing systems. The differences mainly involve the time it takes to learn, and the rate of acquisition.     

Relations between early reading and writing skills among Spanish-speaking language minority children

Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children’s Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language) were related to their Spanish and English early writing skills using a sample of 554 children whose home language was Spanish. Multivariate regression analyses with simultaneous outcomes (Spanish and English invented spelling skills) were conducted to evaluate whether children’s early reading and writing skills were related across languages. Results indicated that children’s print knowledge and phonological awareness skills, but not oral language skills, were significantly related to their Spanish and English invented spelling skills. Spanish early literacy skills were not differentially related to Spanish and English reading and writing skills. The magnitude of the relations between print knowledge and oral language skills and children’s invented spelling skills varied as a function of child age; however, the magnitude of the relation between phonological awareness and invented spelling skills did not differ as a function of child age. Furthermore, results suggested that language minority children’s early reading and writing skills are related but distinct constructs and that children may be able to apply information gained from learning to read and write in their first language when learning to write in their second language.     

An Experimental Study to Measure the Contribution of Motion Pictures and Slide-Films to Learning Certain Units in the Course Introduction to Nursing Arts

This teaching study tested whether guiding invented spelling through a Vygotskian approach to feedback would facilitate kindergarten children's entry into literacy more so than phonological awareness instruction. Participants included 40 kindergarteners whose early literacy skills were typical of literacy-rich classrooms, and who were receiving a structured balanced literacy curriculum. The children were randomly assigned to one of two teaching conditions (phonological awareness; invented spelling) and participated in 16 teaching sessions over an 8-week period in kindergarten. Before these teaching sessions, the groups were equivalent in early literacy and language skills including alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness and oral vocabulary. Children in both conditions saw growth in alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness (marked by large effect sizes), but the invented-spelling group showed more growth in invented spelling sophistication and learned to read more words on posttest. These advantages were reflected in medium to large effect sizes. Follow-up assessment in Grade 1 revealed potential lasting advantages for the invented spelling group. These findings support the view that with guidance and developmentally appropriate feedback, invented spelling promotes early literacy by providing a milieu for children to explore the relations between oral and written language.     

The role of invented spelling on learning to read in low-phoneme awareness kindergartners: a randomized-control-trial study

The goal of the present intervention research was to test whether guided invented spelling would facilitate entry into reading for at-risk kindergarten children. The 56 participating children had poor phoneme awareness, and as such, were at risk of having difficulty acquiring reading skills. Children were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions: invented spelling, phoneme segmentation, or storybook reading. All children participated in 16 small group sessions over 8 weeks. In addition, children in the three training conditions received letter-knowledge training and worked on the same 40 stimulus words that were created from an array of 14 letters. The findings were clear: on pretest, there were no differences between the three conditions on measures of early literacy and vocabulary, but, after training, invented spelling children learned to read more words than did the other children. As expected, the phoneme-segmentation and invented-spelling children were better on phoneme awareness than were the storybook-reading children. Most interesting, however, both the invented spelling and the phoneme-segmentation children performed similarly on phoneme awareness suggesting that the differential effect on learning to read was not due to phoneme awareness per se. As such, the findings support the view that invented spelling is an exploratory process that involves the integration of phoneme and orthographic representations. With guidance and developmentally appropriate feedback, invented spelling provides a milieu for children to explore the relation between oral language and written symbols that can facilitate their entry in reading.     

The role of oral language in ­underpinning the text generation ­difficulties in children with specific ­language impairment

Children with specific language impairments (SLI) have difficulties in producing written text. It was hypothesised that the constraints on writing in children with SLI were similar to typically developing younger children with the same level of vocabulary knowledge. Twenty‐three children with SLI (aged 10:5) were matched with 23 children for chronological age (CA) and 23 children for vocabulary levels (VC). Children with SLI performed significantly below their CA peers but not their VC peers on all aspects of writing including spelling. Regression analyses indicated that written text measures of spelling errors and oral language measures of vocabulary were significant predictors of writing products for both the children with SLI and their VC peers. This highlights the importance of oral and written language for the quality of children's written text and indicates that the writing of children with SLI was commensurate with their vocabulary and spelling levels. The results point to the role of both phonological and non‐phonological processes in written text production in struggling writers.     

The associations among preschool children’s growth in early reading,executive function,and invented spelling skills

The purpose of the present study was to examine associations among children’s emergent literacy (early reading), language, executive function (EF), and invented spelling skills across prekindergarten. Participants included 123, primarily African American, 4-year-old children enrolled in a variety of prekindergarten settings. In addition to describing the concurrent and longitudinal relations between children’s emergent literacy, EF, and invented spelling skills, this study investigated associations among children’s growth in these targeted skills and explored potential indirect effects from children’s EF to invented writing skill. Multiple regression analyses suggested that although early reading skills were significantly and concurrently associated with invented spelling skills, children’s phonological awareness was the only early reading skill predictive of later invented spelling skills. Children’s EF was not concurrently or longitudinally associated with invented spelling after controlling for early reading skills. However, regression analyses of children’s residual scores suggested that children’s EF skill at the beginning of the semester was predictive of their later invented spelling skills through children’s letter-sound knowledge.     

Learning to Spell Words: Findings,Theories, and Issues

There has been less research on how children learn to spell than on how they learn to read, but a good deal is now known about spelling development. This article reviews studies of normative development, beginning with children’s early scribbles and proceeding to prephonological spelling involving letters, phonologically influenced invented spelling, and more advanced spelling. Most of the studies deal with spelling development in alphabetic writing systems. Theories about how children learn to spell, including constructivist theories, stage and phase theories, dual-route theories, and Integration of Multiple Patterns, are presented and reviewed in light of the research evidence. The final section of the article discusses directions for future research and implications for children with spelling difficulties.     

Promotion of literacy skills in early childhood: a follow-up study from kindergarten to Grade 1 / Fomento de habilidades de lecto-escritura en la primera infancia: estudio de seguimiento desde la educación infantil al primer curso de educación primaria

Several researchers have shown that invented spelling activities in kindergarten foster preschool children’s early literacy skills. However, few studies have assessed its impact on learning to read and write in the first year of primary school. Our goal was to analyse the impact of an invented spelling programme with kindergarteners on their literacy skills until the end of Grade 1. A follow-up study was conducted with 45 five-year-old Portuguese children attending two classes of two schools in Lisbon. The teaching effect was controlled as children from each class were randomly assigned into two groups (experimental/control) — equivalent on letter knowledge, cognitive abilities and phonological awareness. The participants were assessed in kindergarten with a pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test (spelling; reading; phonemic awareness) and at the end of Grade 1 (spelling; reading). The experimental group participated in invented spelling sessions, while control children participated in storytelling activities. Data analysis revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups. The experimental group scored higher, not only in kindergarten but also in the follow-up year for all literacy measures.     

Letter processing in reading and spelling: Some dissociations

We describe the complex pattern of spared and impaired performance observed in a neurologically impaired subject on a number of letter processing tasks including: written letter naming, alphabetization, matching across typecase and font, oral and written spelling to dictation, and across-case letter priming. The observed dissociation in performance between the naming of written letters and the naming of letters in oral spelling as well as the dissociation between oral spelling and written spelling are shown to support a model of letter processing in which a distinction is drawn between visuo-spatial and abstract levels of letter representation. We also describe symmetrical deficits in the reading and writing of letters. These can be understood: in reading, as the result of an impairment to the processes which mediate the conversion of visuo-spatial letter representations to abstract representations, and in writing, as a deficit to the processes which negotiate the apparently reverse operation. This finding is interpreted within the context of the notions of neural and functional proximity and we raise the possibility that processes which perform distinct computations may, nonetheless, share certain computational resources.Requests for offprints should be addressed to Brenda Rapp or Alfonso Caramazza. The research reported in this paper was made possible through the support of NIH (NINCDS) NS22202 and the Seaver Institute. We would like to express our appreciation to J. E. for his participation in this study and we thank Roberta Ann Goodman-Schulman and Cristina Romani for their helpful comments and Paul Mullin for his generous programming assistance.     

Immediate and delayed effects of invented writing intervention in preschool

This study examined the effects of a 10 week invented writing program with five-year-old preschoolers (mean age 5.7 years) on their immediate post intervention literacy skills and also the facilitative effects of the intervention on the subsequent learning to read during the first 6 months of schooling. The study included 105 children (54 girls) from 12 preschools in Norway. The preschools were randomly assigned to the experimental group with the invented writing program, or the control group with the ordinary program offered to preschoolers. The classroom-based programs (40 sessions) were conducted by the children’s regular teachers. The children’s emergent literacy skills were evaluated using a pre-test, a post-test and a follow-up test 6 months later, and the data were analyzed using latent autoregressive models. The results showed that the invented writing group performed significantly better than the control group on the post-test for the measures of phoneme awareness (d = .54), spelling (d = .65) and word reading (d = .36). Additionally, indirect effects were observed on the delayed follow-up tests on phoneme awareness (d = .45), spelling (d = .48) and word reading (d = .26). In conclusion, we argue that invented writing appeared to smooth the progress of emergent literacy skills in preschool, including the subsequent reading development in school. Contextualized in a semi-consistent orthography and a preschool tradition that does not encourage the learning of written language skills, the findings add to our knowledge of how children learn to write and read.     

Examining the Relationship Between Emergent Literacy Skills and Invented Spelling in Prekindergarten Spanish-Speaking Dual Language Learners

The purpose of the present study was to examine associations among English and Spanish emergent literacy skills of prekindergarten (pre-K) Spanish-speaking dual language learners in relation to their English invented spelling. Study participants included 141 Spanish-speaking 4-year-old children enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs in a large urban city located in the Southeast. All children were receiving English-only instruction. Children’s Spanish and English receptive vocabulary and code-related skills were assessed in the fall and spring of their pre-K year, but their invented spelling was assessed only in the spring. Research Findings: Analyses revealed significant correlations among children’s English and Spanish receptive vocabulary as well as English and Spanish early code-related skills in the fall and spring of the school year. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed direct contributions of children’s English vocabulary and growth in Spanish code-related skills across the year to children’s English invented spelling in the spring of the school year. This analysis also revealed that associations between children’s English code-related skills and invented spelling appear to work through Spanish code-related skills. Practice or Policy: In order to promote young dual language learners’ English invented spelling skills, early childhood educators should seek to support children’s English vocabulary and English and Spanish code-related emergent literacy skills.     

Metrical stress sensitivity in young children and its relationship to phonological awareness and reading

This paper reports two studies of young English‐speaking children's ability to cope with changes to the metrical stress pattern of spoken words and the relationship between this ability, phonological awareness and early reading development. Initially, 39 children aged 4 and 5 years were assessed on their ability to identify mispronounced words, including words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed. The children were significantly worse at identifying words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed than words that were mispronounced in other ways. The second study was a cross‐sectional comparison of 31 5, 6 and 7‐year‐old children's performance on the metrical stress reversal condition of the mispronunciation task. Measures of the children's written language skills and phonological awareness were also taken. The 7‐year‐old children outperformed the 5‐year‐olds on the metrical stress task. Performance on this measure was associated with most of the measures of phonological awareness and literacy, and was associated with rhyme awareness and spelling ability after age had been taken into account. Moreover, metrical stress sensitivity could account for variance in spelling ability after phonological awareness had been taken into account, and after vocabulary had been taken into account. This suggests that stress sensitivity may influence spelling development in a way that is independent of its contribution to phonological representations.     

Exploring Written Narrative in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension

This study investigated written language production in 10‐year‐old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading, these children are poor at understanding what they read. Participants completed a spelling test, and were asked to write an extended narrative, prompted by a series of pictures. Poor comprehenders showed age‐appropriate spelling skills, and their narratives did not differ from those produced by control children in terms of length or syntactic complexity. However, their narratives captured less of the story content, and contained a less sophisticated story structure. These findings are discussed within a framework that sees weaknesses in aspects of oral language placing constraints on aspects of written language production.     

Roles of position, stress, and proficiency in L2 children’s spelling: A developmental perspective

This study investigated the roles of phoneme position, stress, and proficiency in L2 spelling development by Taiwanese students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), an alphabetic writing system typologically different from the learners’ L1 logographic system. Structured nonword spelling tests were administered to EFL sixth-graders with lower and higher English proficiency level. The results showed that overall, final phonemes were spelled more poorly than their initial and medial counterparts; however, phoneme position effect decreased as learners’ English proficiency improved. Secondly, spelling of the stressed syllable was significantly better than that of the unstressed syllable. However, when phonemes were held constant, stress effect was significant only in the first, but not in the second syllable. Thirdly, higher proficient EFL children spelled significantly better than their lower proficient counterparts, and spelling errors were more systematic in the former. The findings of the study are discussed from linguistic, psychological, and developmental perspectives.     

Identifying and remediating dyslexia in the Reception year,a new possibility?

Research has shown that dyslexics have an inability to establish sound‐symbol correspondence, phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge by the normal teaching methods used in schools. In new research with Reception year children, ages 4 and 5 years, it was found that 90 per cent on entry to 8 Reception classes had not established sound to symbol correspondence. Five months later, despite the normal daily teaching of reading and writing skills, one third of children had still not ‘cracked the alphabetic code’. Reports were sent to the teachers identifying each child's level of skill in handwriting and spelling with suggestions for specific interventions to promote the learning of sounds and their symbols. On entry into Year 2, in a 10 minute writing test, it was found that all the shildren had now developed sound‐symbol knowledge. At the end of Key Stage 1 the national SATs results showed that the disadvantaged groups in the project schools had raised their performance by 30 per cent in literacy above previous years and the already high perfoorming group had improved by 10 per cent. One dyslexic was identified in the Year 2 test by a need for word‐building teaching.     

Spelling development in deaf and hearing children: Evidence for use of morpho-phonological regularities in French

This study investigated the processes that deaf school children use for spelling. Hearing and deaf spellers of two age groups spelled three types of words differing in orthographic transparency (Regular, Morphological and Opaque words). In all groups, words that could be spelled on the basis of phoneme-grapheme knowledge (Regular words) were easier than words that could be spelled only on the basis of lexical orthographic information (Opaque words). Words in which spelling can be derived from morphological information were easier than Opaque words for older deaf and hearing subjects but not for younger subjects. In deaf children, use of phoneme-grapheme knowledge seems to develop with age, but only in those individuals who had intelligible speech. The presence of systematic misspellings indicates that the hearing-impaired youngsters rely upon inaccurate speech representations they derived mainly form lip-reading. The findings thus suggest that deaf subjects's spelling is based on an exploitation of the linguistic regularities represented in the French alphabetic orthography, but that this exploitation is limited by the vagueness of their representations of oral language. These findings are discussed in the light of current developmental models of spelling acquisition.     

Phonemic awareness,spontaneous writing,and reading and spelling development from a preventive perspective

This study examined the nature of the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling development and focused particularlyon the development of early self-directed writing. The spontaneous writing attempts of 44 first-graders were followed on 6 test occasions from the start of grade 1 (7 years) until the middle of grade 2. The children were divided into 2 groups, one group (N = 21) with a high level of phonemic awareness on entry into grade 1 (HPA) and one group (N = 23) with a low level on entry (LPA). The connection between level of inventedspelling used in the self-directed writing and later reading andspelling achievement in grades 1 and 2 was investigated. The results showed remarkable differences between the two groups. Level of invented spelling at Time 1 was highly predictive of both reading and spelling achievement at the end of grades 1 and 2, but only for the HPA group. With Time of Mastery regarding phonemic spelling as the independent variable and reading and spelling at the end of grade 2 as the dependent variable, regressions analysis indicated strong direct effects of early phonemic spelling upon later reading and spelling development, but only for the LPA children. The two groups showed different patterns of development in learning to read and spell during grades 1 and 2.     

Patterns of spelling in young deaf and hard of hearing students

The study examined the invented spelling abilities demonstrated by kindergarten and first-grade deaf and hard of hearing students. The study included two parts: In Part 1, the researcher compared three groups (deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing) using posttesting only on the Early Reading Screening Inventory, or ERSI (Morris, 1998), and in part 2 collected and analyzed samples of the spelling of deaf students in a Total Communication program. Analysis showed that the deaf group performed significantly differently in three areas: concept of word, word recognition, and phoneme awareness ("invented spelling"; Read, 1971). The deaf group outperformed the hearing and hard of hearing groups in concept of word and word recognition. But in phoneme awareness, the deaf group performed significantly less well than the hearing group. Therefore, the deaf group's spelling was followed for 1 year. Deaf students' spelling patterns were not the same as those of hearing and hard of hearing students. Deaf students' spelling miscues were directly related to the cueing systems of lipreading, signing, and fingerspelling.     

Responding to the Message: providing a social context for children learning to write

Abstract In this classroom‐based research study, written expression was viewed as an interactive social process involving written communication between the teacher and the children. Children received increased opportunities to write on topics they chose themselves, and their teacher responded in writing to the content of their writing. The teacher did not provide corrective feedback for accuracy of spelling or grammar throughout the study. Written content feedback from the teacher was provided to each child according to an intra‐subject ABAB research design. Analysis of the teacher's written feedback identified her use of six specific categories of positive response to the themes, ideas and characters of each child's writing. Significant increases in both quantity and quality of writing occurred during the written content feedback phases. Spelling accuracy was maintained at a high level of accuracy throughout the study.     

Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children's literacy attainment?

This paper reports on two studies which investigated the relationship between children's texting behaviour, their knowledge of text abbreviations and their school attainment in written language skills. In Study One, 11–12‐year‐old children provided information on their texting behaviour. They were also asked to translate a standard English sentence into a text message and vice versa. The children's standardised verbal and non‐verbal reasoning scores were also obtained. Children who used their mobiles to send three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores than children who sent none. However, the children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text abbreviations (‘textisms’) tended to have better performance on a measure of verbal reasoning ability, which is highly associated with Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 3 English scores. In Study Two, children's performance on writing measures was examined more specifically. Ten to eleven‐year‐old children were asked to complete another English to text message translation exercise. Spelling proficiency was also assessed, and KS2 Writing scores were obtained. Positive correlations between spelling ability and performance on the translation exercise were found, and group‐based comparisons based on the children's writing scores also showed that good writing attainment was associated with greater use of textisms, although the direction of this association is nor clear. Overall, these findings suggest that children's knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for children in this age range.