Early development of writing

Abstract

The development of writing'in young children was investigated by means of a two-year longitudinal study of children aged from three to six years. The children were visited every six or eight weeks, when their ability to produce writing was tested; and their comprehension of various aspects of the writing system was also assessed. A smaller sample of two-year-old children was studied similarly for nine months.

Five levels of understanding of written language were identified. At the first level children showed no awareness of writing as distinct from drawing. Children at the second level were beginning to understand that writing was something that could convey meaning, while at the third level their writing began to resemble handwriting or individual letters. By the fourth level they were producing recognisable letters or numbers, but without any understanding of conventional meanings. Finally, children at level five were attempting to write phonetically. The progress of the children over the period of the study was charted. and the development of writing in Scottish children was compared with that reported by other authors; in' particular Ferreiro and her colleagues in South America..

Ferreiro had reported that children, form several hypotheses, about the nature of written language. before coming to understand that writing is in fact a phonetic representation of speech. But the studies reported here produced little, evidence for the existence of these hypotheses. Most importantly, there was no suggestion that Scottish children passed through a syllabic stage, when they believed that each grapheme should represent a spoken syllable.

Therefore Ferreiro's claim that, in a Piagetian sense, children invent written language for themselves and must go through a series of mistaken beliefs about writing) was rejected. Instead, it was concluded that most young children can and will learn to write phonetically if they are taught the nature of the writing system.