Children use letter-name knowledge as a shortcut when inventing phonologically based spellings¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r2–r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2013 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? U.S. children produce spellings like ‹R› and ‹KR› for car, based on letter names, before they can isolate the phonemes within the /αɹ/ unit. → Treiman Rebecca 2013 q2 i? Letter-name use in invented spellings is also documented among learners of Portuguese and Hebrew. → Treiman Rebecca 2013 (2)

Evidence¶

Treiman Rebecca 2013¶

Treiman Rebecca, Kessler Brett. (2013). Learning to Use an Alphabetic Writing System. Language Learning and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2013.812016

q2 · i? · review · r3

Review of studies of beginning spellers (Treiman, 1993, 1994): children bootstrap from letter-name knowledge to produce partial phonological spellings such as ‹R› and ‹KR› for car. The review frames this as use of the known to tackle the unknown.

"a U.S. child can write ‹R› for car if she detects the sequence /αɹ/ in the spoken word and if she writes down the letter that has this name."

Treiman Rebecca 2013 (2)¶

Treiman Rebecca, Kessler Brett. (2013). Learning to Use an Alphabetic Writing System. Language Learning and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2013.812016

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports cross-language evidence, citing Portuguese and Hebrew studies, that letter-name knowledge supports invented spellings beyond English.

"Further evidence that children use their knowledge of letter names when inventing spellings comes from learners of Portuguese (Pollo, Kessler, & Treiman, 2005, 2007) and Hebrew (Levin, Patel, Margalit, & Barad, 2002)."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Alphabet Knowledge and Print Awareness — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Children with higher initial letter-name knowledge show faster growth in phonological awareness across the preschool year — related
• Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge fluency are each uniquely related to both word reading and spelling in kindergartners — related
• Initial phonological awareness uniquely predicts growth in letter-name knowledge, most strongly via elision skill — related
• The bidirectional relation between letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness was independent of maturation and correlated developmental trajectories — related
• Prephonological spellers produce letter strings that statistically resemble the writing of their language rather than random strings — related
• Silent-letter omission and insertion errors together comprise 55 per cent of real spelling errors — related