The Emergence of Writing: Children?s Writing During the Pre-Alphabetic Spelling Phase

Abstract

Learning to write is a central part of becoming literate. From an emergent literacy perspective, it is argued that learning to write occurs during the first years of a child' s life, fostered by experiences that permit and promote meaningful interaction with oral and written language. Data from a research study that took place in five kindergarten schools in the region of Achaia is reported. The early children' s attempts to write are in the center of this paper. Written samples by 57 pupils (aged 5;0 to 5;11), who were in the prephonemic spelling stage are analysed. During this stage even though the children have not discovered yet that letters (graphemes) represent sounds of speech (phonemes) they demonstrate a great amount of knowledge of what written language is and how it works. The results of the study suggest that writing acquisition occurs to some extent before formal teaching and children construct their knowledge about writing, starting from gross distinctions and gradually through experience they move to finer ones. The educational implications of the findings are also discussed. The main argument is that kindergarten school could help in the development of early literacy, and what is needed is an approach that starts from what children know and helps them tο discover writing themselves.