Prephonological spelling and its connections with later word reading and spelling performance

Abstract

Before children are able to invent phonologically plausible spellings of words, they may produce strings of letters that do not seem to be motivated by the sounds in words. To examine the nature of these prephonological spellings and their relationship to later literacy performance, we administered a test in which children spelled a series of words using preformed letters, together with other literacy-related tests, to 106 U.S. 3- to 5-year-olds who had not received formal literacy instruction. We then followed the children into the first years of school, administering standardized spelling and word reading tests yearly for the subsequent 3 years. We used quantitative procedures to identify children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1. Although these children did not use phonologically plausible letters at a rate above that expected by chance, their spellings demonstrated some knowledge about common letters and digrams—graphotactic knowledge. The prephonological spellers also showed some knowledge of the alphabet and some phonological awareness, indicating that these skills do not suffice for phonological spelling. Children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1 were poorer readers and spellers at the later testing points, on average, than children who were not. This result reveals the continuity between children’s early spelling attempts and their later literacy skills and the importance of phonology in spelling. We did not find, as Kessler et al. [Journal of Learning Disabilities (2013), Vol. 46, pp. 252–259] did in a study where children wrote words by hand, that better graphotactic knowledge among prephonological spellers is associated with better spelling during later years.