Abstract
Following several studies on the relationship between phonological awareness, children’s knowledge of letter names and their understanding of the alphabetic code, we pose the hypothesis that children’s knowledge of letter names may contribute to their analysis of the oral segments of words, thereby enabling them to produce writing in which some of the sounds are represented by appropriate letters. The participants were 80-syllabic 5-year-old kindergarten children, who were assigned to 2 experimental and 2 control groups and submitted to phonological and letter knowledge tests. We asked the children in the experimental groups to write a set of words in which either the initial sound (Exp. G. 1) or the middle sound (Exp. G. 2) coincided with the name of a letter known by the child; the children in the control groups were asked to write a set of control words. The results show that the introduction of facilitating words prompts syllabic children to produce writing in which some of the sounds are represented by appropriate letters; Exp. G. 1 gave better results than Exp. G. 2. Finally, there is a positive relationship between the results achieved by children in phonological and letter name tests and the number of sounds they write phonetically.
Résumé
A la suite de recherches sur les relations entre la conscience phonologique, la connaissance du nom des lettres et la compréhension du code alphabétique, nous avons posé l’hypothèse que la connaissance que les enfants ont du nom des lettres peut contribuer à une analyse plus fine des mots à l’oral, leur permettant de produire des écrits où certains sons sont représentés par des lettres correctes.
Les participants ont été 80 enfants de grande section de maternelle qui ont été distribués par 2 groupes expérimentaux et 2 groupes de contrôle; nous avons évalué leur conscience phonologique et leur connaissance du nom des lettres. Les enfants des groupes expérimentaux ont écrit un ensemble de mots dans, lesquels ou bien le son initial (Gexp1) ou bien le son médial (Gexp2) coïncidaient avec le nom d’une lettre connue par l’enfant; les enfants des groupes contrôle ont écrit un ensemble de mots contrôle.
Les enfants des groupes expérimentaux ont obtenu de meilleurs résultats que ceux des groupes contrôle. Finalement, nous avons constaté l’existence d’une relation positive entre, d’une part, leur conscience phonologique et leur connaissance du nom des lettres et, d’autre part, le nombre de sons qui ont été représentes par des lettres correctes.
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Martins, M.A., Silva, C. Letter names, phonological awareness and the phonetization of writing. Eur J Psychol Educ 16, 605–617 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173200
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173200