Emergent Literacy and Early Writing Skills

Abstract

In the present study, the authors aimed to assess the short- and long-term predictive power of the various components of an emergent literacy model on early writing abilities in a language with a mainly transparent orthography (Italian). Emergent literacy skills were assessed in 72 children (M age = 5.05 years, SD = +/- .03) who were followed longitudinally from preschool to the end of the first grade of primary school. Their early writing abilities (orthographic correctness in writing individual words) and their advanced writing abilities (orthographic correctness in text writing) were tested at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Multiple stepwise and logistic regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the predictive capacities of emergent literacy abilities on early and advanced writing competences. Results show that notational competence is a strong predictor of early writing skills and that phonological competence only has an effect insofar as it is integrated with notational competence. Emergent literacy competences do not significantly predict orthographic errors in advanced text writing. This research allows for reconsideration of the importance of phonological awareness and gives a central role to notational competence in predicting early writing competence.

Cross-lag analysis of longitudinal associations between primary school students’ writing and reading skills

“…These participants were randomly extracted from a larger cohort of students, representative of the population (Pinto, Bigozzi, Accorti Gamannossi, & Vezzani, 2012). All of the children were Italian mother-tongue speakers.…”

The relationship between oral and written narratives: A three‐year longitudinal study of narrative cohesion, coherence, and structure

“…Narrative competence was explored by asking children to produce fictional stories, which have cohesive, coherent, and structural elements that differ from those of other subgenres, for example the retelling of real experiences -Or personal stories . Very few studies have analysed writing predictors (Dunsmuir & Blatchford, 2004;Hooper et al, 2010;Pinto et al, 2012). In the present research, the predictive relationship between oral and written narrative competencies among kindergarteners and first and second graders was analysed in terms of the three main components of narrative competence, that is cohesion, coherence, and structure, which develop continually from kindergarten through the early school years (Cain, 2003).…”

“…The relationship between oral and written narratives, especially at early acquisition stages, and the ways the former affects the latter is an extremely important topic (Dockrell & Connelly, ) because narrative competencies are crucial in preventing future literacy problems (Dockrell & Connelly, ; Ketelaars, Jansonius, Cuperus, & Verhoeven, ; Landerl et al ., ). Despite this fact, research exploring writing and writing acquisition predictors has been limited (Dunsmuir & Blatchford, ; Hooper, Roberts, Nelson, Zeisel, & Kasambira Fannin, ; Pinto, Bigozzi, Gamannossi, & Vezzani, ) and has been conducted in a fragmented way such that a few researchers have focused on the development of oral narrative competencies (Makinen, Loukusa, Nieminen, Leinonen, & Kunnari, ), while others have focused on written narrative competencies in later grades (Hertz‐Lazarowitz, ). As a result, a clear picture of the relationship between these competencies in children is lacking (Fang, ).…”

Evaluating the Predictive Impact of an Emergent Literacy Model on Dyslexia in Italian Children

“…The emergent abilities, and relative measures, to be assessed in kindergarten have been selected following the indications of the emergent literacy model for Italian validated by Pinto et al (2009). In this way, it was possible to have measures that have been proven to be predictive of the development of formal writing in Italian (Pinto, Bigozzi, Accorti Gamannossi & Vezzani, 2011).…”