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

Abstract

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 eight 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.

Conceptualizações sobre linguagem escrita – Percursos de investigação

“…O interesse científico pelas escritas das crianças, antes do ensino formal, tem aumentado nos últimos anos (McBride-Chang, 1998;Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008b;Pollo, Kessler, & Treiman, 2005;Sénéchal, Ouelette, Pagan, & Lever, 2012;Tolchinsky, 2005). Enquanto tradicionalmente se considerava que estas tentativas de escrita eram desprovidas de qualquer sentido, hoje em dia pensa-se que elas são como uma janela através da qual se podem olhar os conhecimentos das crianças sobre o código escrito e considera-se que constituem um importante contributo para a compreensão do princípio alfabético (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008a).…”

Actes du Symposium international sur la litéracie à l’école = International Symposium for Educational Literacy (SILE/ISEL)

“…Knowledge of picture-books as a predictor of young children's vocabulary development. Journal of Educational Psychology,88, Sénéchal, M., Ouellette, G., Pagan, S. et Lever, R. (2012). The role of invented spelling on learning to read in low-phoneme-awareness kindergartners: A randomized-control-trial study.…”

“…D'une part, des résultats similaires ont été obtenus par Sénéchal, Ouellette, Pagan et Lever (2012) dans leur étude d'intervention menée auprès d'enfants de maternelle à risque de difficultés de lecture en raison d'une conscience phonologique très faible. D'autre part, Ouellette, Sénéchal et Haley (2013) ont montré des bienfaits plus durables pour les enfants du groupe « écriture inventée », comparativement aux enfants du groupe « conscience phonologique ».…”

Escritas inventadas em crianças de idade pré-escolar: necessidade de um modelo integrativo das abordagens fonológica, construtivista e da aprendizagem estatística

“…Estes resultados, ao contrário do estudo anterior, apontam para a ideia de que as escritas inventadas facilitam a integração de conhecimentos fonológicos e ortográficos favorecendo assim a aquisição da leitura. Estes dados foram replicados num outro estudo com crianças de idade pré-escolar com baixas competências fonológicas, sugerindo que estes programas de treino são eficazes para prevenir dificuldades de aprendizagem (Sénéchal, Ouellette, Pagan, & Lever, 2012).…”