Toddlers learn rules of writing very early
ST LOUIS: Even the proudest of parents may struggle to find some semblance of meaning behind the seemingly random mish-mash of letters that often emerge from a toddler’s first scribbled and scrawled attempts at putting words on paper.
But new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that children as young as three are already beginning to recognise and follow important rules and patterns governing how letters in the English language fit together to make words.
The study, published this month in the journal Child Development, provides new evidence that children start to learn about some aspects of reading and writing at a very early age.
“Our results show that children begin to learn about the statistics of written language, for example about which letters often appear together and which letters appear together less often, before they learn how letters represent the sounds of a language,” said study co-author Rebecca Treiman, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences.
Our results show that children begin to learn about the statistics of written language, for example about which letters often appear together and which letters appear together less often, before they learn how letters represent the sounds of a language.
– Rebecca Treiman, professor of psychological and brain sciences
An important part of learning to read and spell is learning about how the letters in written words reflect the sounds in spoken words. Children often begin to show this knowledge around five or six years of age when they produce spellings such as BO or BLO for “blow.”
We tend to think that learning to spell doesn’t really begin until children start inventing spellings that reflect the sounds in spoken words — spellings like C or KI for “climb”. These early invented spellings may not represent all of the sounds in a word, but children are clearly listening to the word and trying to use letters to symbolise some of the words within it, Treiman said.
As children get older, these sound-based spellings improve. For example, children may move from something like KI for “climb” to something like KLIM.
“Many studies have examined how children’s invented spellings improve as they get older, but no previous studies have asked whether children’s spellings improve even before they are able to produce spellings that represent the sounds in words,” Treiman said. “Our study found improvements over this period, with spellings becoming more word-like in appearance over the preschool years in a group of children who did not yet use letters to stand for sounds.”