Letter names help children to connect print and speech.

Abstract

A critical step in the acquisition ofliteracy involves learning that the printed forms of words symbolize the words' linguistic forms. We propose that children first connect print and speech by noticing links between letters in printed words (e.g., the b of beech) and letter names in the corresponding spoken words (e.g., the /bi/ in the spoken word beech). Support for this proposal comes from 2 experiments in which preschoolers were asked to say the first letters of words. Children were relatively good at telling that beech and beaver began with b and that deaf ended with/. They were less likely to know that bone and bonus began with b and that toa/ended with/. Moreover, some children stated that wife began with y and that seem began with c. These errors reflect the letter names at the beginnings of the spoken words. Not until first grade can most North American children complete words on their own, using reasonable spellings that reflect the words' sounds. However, writing does not emerge full blown in first grade. Rather, it has a long developmental history. Preschoolers may write by making marks with a crayon or pencil, even before they know the conventional letters. Their writing, albeit unconventional, differs noticeably from their drawing. For example, preschoolers may produce linearly arranged strings of units, resembling print, or wavy lines, resembling cursive (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Tolchinsky-Landsmann & Levin, 1985). They distinguish writing and drawing based on characteristi cs such as linearity and size (Lavine, 1977). Although children as young as 3 or 4 know that writing looks different than drawing, they do not yet understand why. They do not appreciate that alphabetic writing is a representation of spoken language. Instead, young children seem to think that the written forms of words reflect their meanings. They believe that variations in the written forms of objects' names correspond to differences in the properties of the objects themselves, just as variations among pictures mirror variations among objects (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Levin & Korat, 1993; Levin & Tolchinsky Landsmann, 1989). In a study by Lundberg and Torneus (1978), for example, Swedish nonreaders saw two