Do young children spell words syllabically? Evidence from learners of Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

The theory that learners of alphabetic writing systems go through a period during which they treat writing as representing syllables is highly influential, especially as applied to learners of Romance languages. The results of Study 1, a 2-year longitudinal study of 76 Portuguese speakers in Brazil from 4 to 6 years of age, did not support this theory. Although most children produced some spellings of words in which the number of letters matched the number of syllables, few children produced significantly more such spellings than expected on the basis of chance. When such spellings did occur, they appeared to reflect partially successful attempts to represent phonemes rather than attempts to represent syllables. Study 2, with 68 Brazilian 4- and 5-year-olds, found similar results even when children spelled words that contained three or four syllables in which all vowels are letter names—conditions that have been thought to favor syllabic spelling. The influential theory that learners of Romance languages go through a period during which they use writing to represent the level of syllables appears to lack a solid empirical foundation.

WritingDinosaurLarge andMosquitoSmall: Prephonological Spellers’ Use of Semantic Information

“…Our findings speak against this idea, however, because the prephonological spellers did not make larger productions or use more marks for words with more phonemes than those with fewer phonemes. Similarly, and in line with findings reported by Cardoso-Martins, Corrêa, Lemos, and Napoleão (2006) and Treiman, Pollo, Cardoso-Martins, and Kessler (2013), prephonological spellers’ writing was not influenced by number of syllables in words. Our results suggest that the children we identified as prephonological spellers did not in fact use phonology in their spellings.…”

Variation and repetition in the spelling of young children

“…To determine children’s ability to spell on a phonological basis, we adapted a procedure used in several previous studies (Kessler, Pollo, Treiman, & Cardoso-Martins, 2013; Pollo et al, 2009; Treiman, Pollo, Cardoso-Martins, & Kessler, 2013). This procedure uses string-edit metrics to compute the distance between each spelling and the pronunciation of the target word by finding the best possible match between the sounds and the letters.…”

Statistical learning and spelling: Evidence from Brazilian prephonological spellers

“…The experimenter helped the child to use the intended label if the child did not do so. In some studies, children were asked to identify the letters that they used (Pollo et al, 2009) or any letters that were unclear (Treiman et al, 2013) after producing each spelling. The spelling was scored as containing the letters that the child intended.…”