Making concepts of print symbolic: understanding how writing represents language

Abstract

Preschool children were given an opportunity to produce pseudocursive scribbles and then assessed for their concepts of print. Prereading children who could identify letters and print their own names participated in four tasks examining their beliefs about what made written material readable. The tasks evaluated children's perceptual distinctions between writing and non-writing as well as more subtle distinctions between printed and cursive forms of writing. Children were first placed in situations that might result in their producing pseudocursive writing and then were asked questions about whether it could be read and who could read it. Following this, they solved three tasks in which they were asked to make judgements about what kinds of material could be read, who could read it, and what letters were represented in a sample of cursive writing. The tasks were progressively more difficult but showed that the children knew a lot about the forms of writing. In spite of this, virtually all the children produced pseudocursive scribbles and believed they could be read. The interpretation is that the knowledge these children have of the forms of writing does not include understanding the symbolic function by which these forms represent language. If children can identify printed letters and they know that reading requires paying attention to those letters, then presumably they also know that what we read comes from the letters on the page. It follows *

Contributions of emergent literacy skills to name writing, letter writing, and spelling in preschool children

“…However, one cannot begin to spell by learning a string of letters by rote or if lacking knowledge about letter names and letter sounds. Being able to spell requires an understanding of the relationship between letters and the symbolic function letters serve (i.e., the alphabetic principle; Bialystok, 1995). Knowing how to write one’s name appears to be an important achievement; it is often the first word children learn to write, and at the start of the writing process, children use the first letters of their names to spell other words (e.g., Both-de Vries & Bus, 2008 e.g., Both-de Vries & Bus, 2010).…”

Literacy and Children's Conception of Words

“…Since then, limitations in children's metalinguistic knowledge and developments of it have become well established. Many researchers (such as Francis 1975, Downing & Leong 1982, Ehri 1985, Olson 1994, and Bialystok 1986 have shown that children's early metalinguistic concepts are influenced, if not determined by, experience with writing; they take a word to be something to write or to read, often with little understanding of how what is read relates to their own speech.…”

Understanding print: Early reading development and the contributions of home literacy experiences

“…These children clearly have not yet grasped what is readable and what is not. Bialystok (1995) asked 3-to 6-yearolds whether diVerent displays, including squiggles, cursive writing, printed words, pictures, and shapes, were good for reading. She found that younger children were more likely than older children to accept nonalphabetic displays as being readable.…”