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Knowledge about letters, p. 1

Knowledge about letters as a foundation for reading and spelling

Rebecca Treiman Washington University in St. Louis

Correspondence: Rebecca Treiman Department of Psychology Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1125, One Brookings Drive St. Louis MO 63130-4899 rtreiman@artsci.wustl.edu phone: (314) 935-5326 fax: (314) 935-7588

To appear in R.M. Joshi & P.G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Knowledge about letters, p. 2

Abstract Phonological awareness and knowledge about letters are both important for learning to read and spell, but less is known about the development of letter knowledge than the development of phonological awareness. This chapter reviews the research on young children's knowledge about the visual forms, names, and sounds of letters, showing that it involves more than rote memorization. The chapter begins by considering children's early knowledge about the visual characteristics of writing and the phonological characteristics of letter names. The discussion then turns to children's knowledge about the written word that is most important to them, their own first name, and how children's learning of their name influences their knowledge about the letters within it. I also examine how children use their early-acquired knowledge about the names of letters, in concert with their phonological skills, to make inferences about the letters' sounds. Children's knowledge of letter names and sounds, it is argued, helps them form preliminary connections between print and speech. These connections are not sufficient for skilled reading of English, a system that requires more than simple letter-sound correspondences, but they help children take their first steps toward mastery of the writing system.

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Knowledge about letters as a foundation for reading and spelling Children need to possess a number of skills in order to learn to read and write. One important skill is phonological awareness. A child who can divide the spoken words bat and bug into smaller units and who knows that the two words start with the same sound can understand why both words are written with three letters and why the first letter is the same in both. Indeed, a child's level of phonological awareness at school entry is a good predictor of that child's success in learning to read (e.g., Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; for a review see Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Another skill that is important for literacy is knowledge about letters. Even if a child can segment a complex spoken syllable such as blast into its individual sounds or phonemes, the child will not be able to write the word unless he or she knows that /b/ is typically symbolized as b, /l/ as l, and so on.1 Children's knowledge about letters and the sounds they represent is, not surprisingly, another good predictor of success in learning to read and spell (e.g., McBride-Chang, 1999; Share et al., 1984; Snow et al., 1998). Over the past 30 years or so, many researchers have studied phonological awareness and its links to reading and spelling skill (e.g., Brady & Shankweiler, 1991; Sawyer & Fox, 1991). This research has been valuable for several reasons. One reason is its developmental approach. Phonemic awareness, studies have shown, does not emerge full-blown in kindergarten or first grade. It develops gradually, with awareness of syllables and their onset (initial consonant or cluster) and rime (vowel and any following consonants) subunits typically preceding awareness of phonemes (e.g., Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Treiman, 1992). Another strength of the research on phonological awareness has been its linguistic focus. For example, researchers have shown that children have more difficulty breaking up consonant clusters, such as the /bl/ of blast, than other phoneme sequences, such as the /b?/ of bat (e.g., Treiman &

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Weatherston, 1992). Children's difficulties with consonant clusters make sense on linguistic grounds. Indeed, many linguists consider syllable-initial consonant clusters to be units, with initial consonants or consonant clusters forming the onset of the syllable (e.g., Fudge, 1987). As another example of the effects of linguistic factors on phonological awareness, children are more likely to confuse pairs of phonemes that differ in the phonetic feature of voicing (e.g., /b/ and /p/) than phonemes that differ in other ways (Treiman, Broderick, Tincoff, & Rodriguez, 1998). Yet another positive feature of the research on phonological awareness is that it has linked specific phonological difficulties to specific reading and spelling errors. For instance, children's problem in the oral segmentation of consonant clusters may cause them to symbolize a consonant cluster with a single letter in spelling (e.g., BAT for blast2), rather with than a sequence of two letters (e.g., Treiman, 1993). Finally, the research on phonological awareness has had valuable implications for instruction. Research-based phonological training programs have yielded improvements in children's phonological awareness and literacy skills (e.g., Byrne, FieldingBarnsley, & Ashley, 2000).

Although there is a large body of research on children's phonological awareness, relatively little research has examined children's knowledge about letters. This imbalance probably reflects the fact that learning the names and sounds of letters has been considered a matter of rote, paired-associate learning (e.g., Windfuhr & Snowling, 2001). If so, it should be a relatively uninteresting topic for researchers to study and a relatively mundane body of knowledge for children to master. The goal of this chapter is to review recent research on children's knowledge about letters, showing that it involves much more than rote memory. I will focus on research that has been carried out with middle-class children from the United States who are learning English as their first language, the group of children that has been examined in

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the majority of the studies. Selected studies with other groups of children will also be mentioned. I hope to show that a developmental, linguistically-based approach can bear fruit in the study of children's letter knowledge, as in the study of phonological awareness. Moreover, certain patterns of performance in reading and spelling make sense given what children know about letters, and the research on letter knowledge has important implications for instruction.

The chapter will begin by considering children's early knowledge about the visual characteristics of writing and the phonological characteristics of letter names. Next, I will discuss how children learn about the written word that is most important and most meaningful to them, their own first name. The following sections will examine how children use their early-acquired knowledge about the names of letters to make inferences about the letters' sounds, and how their knowledge of letter names and sounds helps them form preliminary connections between print and speech. I will also discuss the need to go beyond simple letter-sound associations in the learning of writing systems such as English. The concluding section will consider the interactions between children's letter knowledge and their phonological awareness, as well as directions for future research. Children's early learning about the visual characteristics of writing and letters

Figure 1a shows a "spelling" of chair that was produced by a child of 3 years, 8 months. The visual form is composed of units which, although not recognizable as English letters, have many of the characteristics of English print. For example, the units are arranged roughly horizontally and are separated by spaces. Figure 1b shows a no trespassing message that was written by the same child 7 months later. This flowing, linear form has many of the characteristics of cursive writing. As these examples suggest, children in literate societies learn about the visual characteristics of letters and writing from an early age. Lavine (1977)

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