the impact of the articula-tory properties of phonemes on the evolution of pre-school children’s...

Applied Psycholinguistics 31 (2010), 693–709doi:10.1017/S0142716410000202

The impact of the articulatoryproperties of phonemes onthe evolution of preschoolchildren’s writing

MARGARIDA MARTINS, CRISTINA SILVA, and MIGUEL PEREIRAInstituto Superior Psicologia Aplicada, Lisbon

Received: October 15, 2008 Accepted for publication: July 14, 2009

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCEMargarida Martins, Instituto Superior Psicologia Aplicada, Lisbon, R. Jardim do Tabaco, No. 34,Lisbon 1149-041, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACTOur aim was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of occlusive versus fricative phonemes usedin writing programs on the evolution of preschool children’s writing. The participants were 39 5-year-old graphoperceptive children. Their intelligence, number of letters known, and phonological skillswere controlled. Their writing was evaluated in a pretest and a posttest using words beginning withfricatives and occlusives. Between the two tests, experimental Group 1 trained the associations betweenletters and occlusive phonemes and experimental Group 2 between letters and fricative phonemes. Thecontrol group classified geometric shapes. Both experimental groups achieved better results than thecontrol group. There were no differences between the experimental groups concerning the use ofF, V, Z, and P; but experimental Group 1 achieved better results for B and D. The program that ledchildren to think about the relationships between speech and writing under linguistically more complexconditions, which involves the mobilization of occlusive phonemes, seems to be more effective in thegeneralization of phonetization procedures than the program that mobilizes phonemes that are easierto isolate within the acoustic flow, such as fricative phonemes.

The question of the processes by which children understand that letters representsound components of words has been analyzed within the framework of children’suse of written language and the knowledge that they gradually acquire aboutthe writing system before they begin formal education. Preschool children oftenmake attempts at writing (invented spellings). The frequency with which theycome into contact with written texts and the quality of the contexts in which theylive, particularly the ways in which adults play the part of mediators between thechildren and written language, determine the way in which they see the writtencode and evolve in their conceptions (Hiebert & Raphael, 1998).

The study of the characteristics of early writing in different languages (AlvesMartins, 1993; Besse, 1996; Chauveau & Rogovas-Chauveau, 1989; Ferreiro,

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Applied Psycholinguistics 31:4 694Martins et al.: The impact of phonemes on preschool children’s writing

1988; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979; Fijalkow, 1993; Pontecorvo & Orsolini, 1996;Sulzby, 1989; Tolchinsky, 1995; Varnava-Skouras, 2005) has shown that children’shypotheses about the way in which the written code functions evolves from aninitial level where writing is not yet determined by linguistic criteria to alphabeticwriting.

At a first level, when they write, children make no attempt to match the oralto the written language; they seek to respond to factors such as the need for aminimum number of letters for each word and for a different combination ofletters to distinguish between different words (graphoperceptive writing). At thislevel children acquire several principles and concepts concerning the written code,as Clay (2000) suggests, such as the principle of directionality or the productionof words with a limited number of letters.

Later on children begin to phonetize their writing, that is, to analyze the oral andlook for the letters that best represent the sounds they have identified (phonetizedwriting). Children often start by representing some of the sounds in the wordsbefore finally representing all of the sounds in the words (alphabetic writing).

The evolution to phonetized writing is mediated by the knowledge that childreninformally acquire about letter names, which helps them to detect the latter in thepronunciation of certain words (Treiman, 2004). This process is thought to favoran understanding of the alphabetic logic, inasmuch as the letters themselves serveas supports for a more systematic analysis of the sequence of the sounds in words.

In the English-language literature various authors (Adams, 1998; Treiman,1998) have begun to attach value to early writing. They argue that invented spellingactivities with preschool children help develop phonemic awareness and make iteasier for them to acquire the alphabetic principle. They have shown that inventedspelling activities simultaneously develop both phonemic awareness and an under-standing of the alphabetic principle, to the extent that they involve metalinguisticreflection about speech. As Bowman and Treiman (2002) state, “Spelling mayencourage children to use the alphabetic principle in a way that reading does not,and may teach skills that eventually transfer to reading” (p. 31).

Byrne (1997, 1998) argues that children may possess an adequate notion of thephonemic structure of oral speech without necessarily understanding the alphabeticnature of written language. This understanding requires that children possess notonly phonemic analysis skills but also a concept of writing, which refers them tothe representation of the phonemic structure of words. Within the overall contextof this concept of writing it is the coordination of letters and phonemic awarenessthat is crucial to the discovery of the alphabetic principle.

The idea that the analytical procedures inherent in children’s attempts at writingcan model and develop skills that enable them to analyze speech is sustained byAlvarado (1998) and Vernon’s (1998) work. Alvarado (1998) used an initial-phoneme deletion task applied to words, which were presented both verbally andaccompanied by a written support, to test children with different levels of writing.As expected, it was the children at the alphabetic level who achieved the highestsuccess rates of around 50% in the verbal form and 95% when the words wereaccompanied by a written version. Along the same lines, Vernon (1998) showedthat children at a less evolved conceptual level provided fewer analytical answersin a word segmentation test than their more advanced peers.


Silva and Alves Martins (2002, 2003) and Alves Martins and Silva (2006a,2006b) confirmed the relationship that was found in the above-mentioned studies.Using writing programs, they demonstrated the existence of an explicit causalrelationship between the evolution of conceptualizations about writing and theperformance in phonemic tasks.

These authors conducted various experimental studies in which they comparedthe effect of programs designed to lead the quality of preschool children’s writingto evolve. After writing a few words, the children were shown the writing ofchildren who were more evolved. They were asked to analyze the word orally,think about the two forms of writing, choose one of them, and justify their choice.In other words, they induced the children to think about speech and print and therelationships between them. This procedure led to both a clear evolution in thequality of the children’s writing and progress in their phonemic awareness.

Evolution toward phonetized writing can also be influenced by various typesof linguistic factors, such as the characteristics of the phonemic sequences in thestructure of a word. Some words possess a phonological structure that makesit easier to mobilize letters; the articulatory properties of the initial phonemesinfluence the individualized perception of both the phonemes themselves and thecharacteristics of the letters that need to be mobilized.

Alves Martins and Silva (2001), Mann (1993), Quintero (1994), and Treimanand Cassar (1997), among others, have shown that writing conventional lettersto represent sounds appears to be related to the phonological characteristics ofthe words in question. Preschool children more often write appropriate letters torepresent the sounds they have identified when they are dealing with words thatcontain phonetic sequences that represent letter names (the effect letter name).

Thus, when children are asked to write words whose initial syllable coincideswith the name of a letter with which they are familiar (e.g. pera [perα] (pear), theletter p [pe] is mobilized more often than if we ask them to write pano [pαnu](cloth) or parede [pαred@] (wall), in which the initial phonetic sequences do notmatch the name of the letter p. When children are familiar with letter names, theythus find it easier to detect those letters in the pronunciation of this type of word.This in turn facilitates the understanding of the sound notation function that theletters play in the alphabetic code.

Some studies, particularly those by Treiman (1993, 1994), say that the effect ofletter names is more accentuated for some letters than for others.

Young Portuguese-speaking children have been reported to produce morevowel- and syllable-oriented spellings than English speakers. Pollo, Kessler, andTreiman (2005) investigated the sources of such differences and found that Por-tuguese words have more vowel letter names and a higher vowel/consonant ratiothan English words.

According to these authors, because Portuguese speakers see more vowel lettersin texts, they may write more vowel letters in their spellings. Alternatively, becausePortuguese speakers hear more vowel letter names in words, they may be moreencouraged to use letter name spelling strategies when spelling vowel sounds thanare young speakers of English.

The nature of vowel letter sound correspondences in Portuguese may also playan important role. Even though the Portuguese language has nine oral vowels,


five nasal vowels, and only five corresponding letters (a, e, i, o, u), the i and uletter names correspond to the sounds they represent. Syllables frequently containopen vowels a, e, and o that match letter names, which makes it easier to correctlyrepresent the vowels than the consonants.

Vernon and Ferreiro (1999) and De Abreu and Cardoso-Martins (1998) alsoshowed that in languages like Brazilian Spanish or Portuguese, the vowels aremore often used in early spellings than the consonants because they have a salientphonological pattern that is attributable to the stability of the relationships betweenthe names of the vowels and the phonemes they represent.

Another aspect of the relationship between the writing of conventional lettersand the sounds to which they apply is the way in which the characteristics ofthe letter names facilitate access to the sounds they represent. Treiman, Tincoff,Rodriguez, Mouzaki, and Francis (1998) showed that the sound of letters inEnglish is easier to learn (more accessible) when the phoneme concerned is at thebeginning of the letter name (e.g., [p] in the letter “p” [pi]) than when it is at theend (e.g., [s] in the letter “s” [εs@]). This effect seems to be more important thanthe nature of the sounds that are represented by the letters (constrictive sounds orocclusive ones). Treiman and Kessler (2003) argue that these results reflect thegreater obviousness of onsets compared to syllable codas.

The articulatory properties of the phonemes in the words that they have towrite can also influence the quality of children’s writing, because some phonemesare likely to be easier to isolate within the flow of speech than others. For ex-ample, according to Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, and Carter (1974), childrenbecome aware of vowels more easily than consonants and find it easier to identifyfricative consonants than occlusive ones. Treiman (1998) and Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley’s (1991, 1993) work shows that it is easier to train children in relationto the phonetic identity of fricatives than that of occlusives, because it is easierto produce these sounds in isolation. At the same time, in the written form it iseasier to confuse phonemes that only differ from one another in their voicing thanthose that are only different in their articulation (Treiman, Broderick, Tincoff, &Rodriguez, 1998). These linguistic factors undoubtedly have consequences in theease or difficulty with which preschool children mobilize conventional letters intheir attempts to spell.

This is the context in which we proposed to analyze the impact of some of theselinguistic variables on the framework of programs that seek to work on children’swriting. Our goal was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of the words thatare used in writing programs, particularly the effect that the articulatory propertiesof the initial phoneme in a word (occlusive/fricative) have on the evolution of theprocesses involved in the phonetization of children’s writing. We also sought toanalyze the extent to which there were generalization effects on the writing ofphonemes that were not worked on during the programs.

We posed the following hypothesis: graphoperceptive children who underwentwriting programs that induce metalinguistic reflection about the relationshipsbetween the initial phoneme of different words and the letters they represent willuse conventional letters to spell the initial sound of the words and will generalizethe phonetization procedures to graphophonetic correspondences that were notworked on during the programs.


We also formulated two research questions. Will the two writing programs (useof occlusive vs. fricative initial phonemes) produce equivalent phonetized writingin the posttest? Will children from the two groups generalize the phonetizationprocedures to graphophonetic correspondences that were not worked on duringthe programs?

METHOD

Participants

The participants were 39 5-year-old children from three classes at a kindergartenattended by 75 5-year-olds, where they were not given any initiation to reading orwriting. In those kindergarten classes there were no regular classroom activities orinstruction relating to phonological awareness or invented spelling, which happensin many kindergartens in Portugal. The teaching of reading and writing normallybegins in the first year of elementary school. The only regular activities relatedto reading and writing were story reading, teaching letter names, and activities inwhich children had to write their own names (e.g., to identify their drawings andpaintings).

None of the children knew how to read, which was verified by means of indi-vidual reading tests. Only children who were familiar with the five vowels andat least with consonants B, D, F, P, V, and Z were selected (46 children). Theirwriting was assessed by means of an initial interview where children were askedto write a set of words and to justify their writings.

Thirty-nine children were selected whose writing was graphoperceptive orpresyllabic. They were randomly divided into three groups. Their age, level ofintelligence, number of consonants known, and level of phonological awarenesswere controlled.

We carried out analyses of variance to compare their age (at the time the preteststook place, April), level of intelligence, number of consonants known (they knewall of the vowels), and results in two phonological awareness tests. The results werethe following: age, F (2, 36) = 1.09, p = .346; level of intelligence, F (2, 36) =0.14, p = .875; number of consonants, F (2, 36) = 0.14, p = .866; initial syllableclassification test, F (2, 36) = 0.78, p = .465; and initial phoneme classificationtest, F (2, 36) = 0.01, p = .990. There were no statistically significant differencesamong the three groups. Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations for thethree groups’ results in relation to these variables.

The children’s writing was assessed in a pretest and a posttest, in which theywere asked to write 24 words beginning with B, D, F, V, P, and Z.

Between the two tests the two experimental groups took part in a writingprogram designed to lead them to use conventional letters to represent the ini-tial consonant in words. Experimental Group 1 wrote words with the occlusiveinitial phonemes [b] and [p]. Experimental Group 2 wrote words whose initialphoneme was fricative ([ f ] and [v]). The control group underwent a set of ex-ercises using logical blocks type materials. The children were asked to classifygeometric shapes in accordance with criteria such as identical shape, size, orcolor.


Table 1. Means and standard deviations for age (months), intelligence, letters(consonants) known, and results in the initial syllable and initial phonemeclassification tests of three groups

Age Intelligence Letters S Ph

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

G.1 67.54 3.80 17.31 4.25 9.62 6.44 10.46 3.23 4.54 2.82G.2 65.54 3.87 16.46 5.75 10.62 8.01 10.38 4.00 4.62 2.43G.3 67.08 3.12 17.15 2.82 9.23 5.70 8.92 3.33 4.69 3.07

Note: S, initial syllable classification; Ph, initial phoneme classification; G.1, occlusivephoneme writing program; G.2, fricative phoneme writing program; G.3, control group.

Instruments and procedures

Assessment of writing to select the participants. In order to select the childrenwith graphoperceptive writing, we asked all of the 5-year-old children attendingthe kindergarten who knew the vowels and at least the six consonants B, D, P, F,V, and Z (46 children) to spell their name and then to spell six words beginningwith the above consonants, to the best of their ability. After spelling each wordthey were asked to read it. After spelling the different words they were asked whythey used certain letters and not others and why they used more or fewer letters insome words than in others. The verbal utterings that frequently accompanied theact of spelling were recorded.

We used a grid that was constructed from those drawn up by Ferreiro (1988)and Alves Martins (1993) to classify the children’s responses.

The words we asked them to spell had different sizes from a linguistic perspec-tive (mono-, di-, tri-, and polysyllabic words). Some of them referred to items ofdifferent sizes (e.g., Boi [boy] (ox)/Formiga [furmigα] (ant)).

These words were chosen so that we could understand whether the reasoningthat underlined the children’s writing was based on the linguistic characteristicsof the words or on the perceptual images children may have built up of whatconstitutes a word, which are strings of letters varying in their relative position or,in certain cases, on the reference items to which the words refer.

If the form of reasoning that governs the writing is linguistic, we can expect thatthe different words will be written according to the number of syllables or lettersthey contain and that children will justify their spellings by making reference tothe correspondences between the oral and the written language.

If a child uses nonlinguistic criteria to govern his/her writing, it may be expectedthat he/she will write the different words using a fixed number of random lettersand a different combination of letters to distinguish between the different wordsand that children will justify their spellings making no reference to the relationsbetween the oral and the written language.

Thirty-nine children were graphoperceptive or presyllabic.

Assessment of writing in the pre- and posttests. Each child was asked to write24 disyllabic words in which the syllables had a consonant–vowel (CV) structure,


because these syllables are the most frequent in Portuguese. According to Vigario,Martins, and Frota (2006), CV, V, and CVC are the most frequent syllabic patternsin the spontaneous talk of adults in European Portuguese at 46%, 16%, and 11%,respectively.

The Portuguese spelling system is relatively shallow, given its predictablegrapheme–phoneme mappings and the stable contextual rules establishinggrapheme–phoneme correspondences (Rebelo, Delgado Martins, & Prudencio,1978). It has six occlusive oral consonants [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], and [g]—four withregular correspondences to the letters p, b, t, and d (the graphophonetic correspon-dences of the other two are governed by contextual rules)—and six fricative ones[f], [v], [s], [z], [ʃ], and [Z], the first two with regular correspondences with theletters f and v; [z] with the letters z or s; [ʃ] with the letters x, s, z, and ch; and[Z] with the letters j, g, or s. The letters z and j always correspond to a uniquephoneme.

Because we wanted to compare occlusive and fricative phonemes, we chosewords beginning with consonants corresponding to a single occlusive or fricativephoneme.

Twelve words began with the consonants B, D, and P (4 words for each conso-nant), which correspond to the occlusive phonemes [b], [d], and [p]. The other 12words began with the consonants F, V, and Z (4 words for each consonant), whichcorrespond to the fricative phonemes [f], [v] and [z].

The second letter of all of the words was a vowel (A, I, O, or U) that alwayscorresponded to the same four phonemes [a], [i], [o], and [u].

Alves Martins and Silva (2006b) demonstrated that 5-year-old children’s abilityto analyze the phonemic components of words was linked to its size and complex-ity. Treiman, Berch, Tincoff, and Weatherston (1993) also showed that preschool-ers have more difficulty in isolating the initial consonant of a long word than theinitial consonant of a short one. The complexity of the phonological structure ofwords can have the same kind of outcome because some sequences of phonemesare more difficult to segment than others. These authors proved that children havemore difficulty in segmenting and spelling syllables of words that contain clusters.

Our aim was to analyze the way in which children represented the initial con-sonant of the words. We controlled the characteristics of the initial syllable of thedifferent words, their length and complexity, and their frequency. According toNascimento et al. (2000), all of the words were very frequent, except those begunwith [z], which are less frequent in Portuguese.

Children were evaluated in the posttest using the dictation of the same set ofwords. We analyzed if the children correctly represented the first consonant inthe different words. To compare the number of words that each of the two groupsphonetized, we allocated 1 point for each word in which the first letter was spelledcorrectly.

Assessment of phonological awareness

In order to assess the children’s phonological awareness, they were given an initialsyllable classification test and an initial phoneme classification test, which wereboth taken from Silva’s (2002) battery of phonological tests. We sought to take into


account both the size of the units (syllables and phonemes) and the phonologicalproperties of the initial phonemes in the words.

Each test was made up of 14 items, preceded by 2 training items. In these teststhe children were given four words in figurative form, two of which began withthe same syllable or the same phoneme, and they were asked to identify the words.The children had to categorize two target words out of four, using a syllabic orphonemic criterion. One point was given for each correct answer.

Assessment of intelligence

The level of the children’s intelligence was assessed using the colored version ofRaven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998) because it is notdependent on verbal aspects.

Writing programs

The writing programs lasted for five sessions of around 15 min each, and theywere designed to lead the children to use conventional letters to represent the initialconsonant in each word. The words used in the programs were always differentfrom those in the pre- and posttests. Experimental Group 1 wrote words with theocclusive initial phoneme ([ p] or [b]), and experimental Group 2 wrote wordswith the fricative initial phoneme ([ f ] or [v]).

In each session each child was asked to write a word as best he/she could andwas then shown the same word written by a hypothetical child from another class,who had used the correct initial consonant to represent the first syllable in theword. He/she was asked to think about his/her writing and that of the other childand to try to think which was the better way to write the word and why. Thechild’s attention was drawn to the first letter in the word. Ten words were usedin each session. In the first 2 words the initial syllable matched the name of theletter. In the other 8 the initial letter was followed by the vowel a, o, i, or u. Forexample, in the first session of the program followed by experimental Group 1,the children were asked to write the words Pena [penα] (Feather) and Pera [perα](Pear), in which the first syllable matches the name of the letter P, and then thewords Papa [papα] (Porridge), Pala [palα] (Awning), Povo [povu] (People), Popa[popα] (Stern), Pico [piku] (Peak), Pino [pinu] (Top), Pulo [pulu] (Jump), andPunho [puñu] (Fist).

All of the words that were presented to the children as having been writtenby the hypothetical child from another school had two letters: a consonant and avowel. The consonant represented the first phoneme of the word and the vowelthe last phoneme, except for the word Voar, in which the vowel represented thethird phoneme.

The following example of the interaction between the researcher (R) and achild named Luis (L) is a good illustration of the dynamic that occurred duringthe writing program sessions:

R: Luis, try to write the word Pera.L writes “LOA.”


R: Try to read it, show me with your finger.L: Pera (points LOA).R: I was yesterday with a child named Joao from another school who wrote Pera in

a different way. Do you want to see?L: Yes.R shows “PA.”L: It is different.R: What is the first letter that Joao wrote?L: He wrote “P” [pe].R: And do you think that Pera begins with P?L: I don’t know.R: Try to say the word slowly.L: Pe-ra.R: How does the word begin?L: Pe, Pe, with P, he has the good letter.

The control group program

We organized a set of exercises with the control group using logical blocks typematerials. The children were asked to classify geometric shapes in accordancewith criteria such as identical shape, size, or color.

The three programs involved five sessions that lasted approximately 15 mineach and were individually conducted by us with the children over the course of2 weeks.

RESULTS

In the pretest none of the children used conventional letters to represent the initialphoneme of the 24 words. They used strings of random letters to represent thedifferent words, combining them and varying their order from word to word.As children used more vowels than consonants in their spellings, in some words(between 1 and 6) eight children from experimental Group 1 and from controlgroup and nine children from experimental Group 2 used a vowel at the beginningof the word that corresponds to the second phoneme of the word.

Figure 1 gives an example of graphoperceptive writing in the pretest from achild named Beatriz in experimental Group 1. As we can see, Beatriz used severalletters to represent each of the words we asked her to write. She did not useany conventional letter to represent the initial sound of the words. In three words(Dono [donu], Pata [patα], and Zona [zonα]) the first letter she wrote was a vowelcorresponding to the second phoneme of the word.

In the posttest all of the children of both experimental groups used conventionalletters to represent the initial sound in some or all of the words (between 8 and 24words).

Figure 2 gives an example of the same child’s writing in the posttest. As we cansee, Beatriz was able to use a correct letter to represent the initial phoneme of allof the words.

Figure 1. Examples of Beatriz’s graphoperceptive writing in the pretest.

Figure 2. Examples of Beatriz’s writing with phonetization in the posttest.


Table 2. Means and standard deviations for the number of words in which the childrenin the two experimental groups phonetized the initial phonemes [b], [d], [f], [p],[v], and [z] in the posttest

b d f p v z Total

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

G.1 3.85 0.55 3.92 0.28 3.62 0.77 3.77 0.44 3.92 0.28 3.92 0.28 23.0 1.29G.2 2.00 1.53 4.00 0.00 1.69 1.32 2.92 1.55 4.00 0.00 3.31 1.49 17.9 4.79

Note: G.1, occlusive phoneme writing program using [b], [p]; G.2, fricative phoneme writing program us-ing [ f ], [v].

None of the children in the control group used conventional letters to representthe initial phoneme of the words. As in the pretest, eight children used a vowelat the beginning of some words (between one and seven words) corresponding tothe second phoneme of the word.

Table 2 provides the means and standard deviations for the number of words inwhich the letters B, D, F, P, V, and Z were used at the beginning of the word andfor the total number of words whose initial consonant was correctly spelled by thetwo experimental groups.

To assess the impact that the articulatory properties of the initial (occlu-sive/fricative) phoneme in words had on the evolution of the phonetization pro-cesses involved in the children’s writing in the posttest, we carried out Mann–Whitney U tests using the group as the independent variable and the number ofwords in which the initial phoneme was correctly written and the number of wordsin which the letters B, D, F, P, V, and Z were used at the beginning of the word asthe dependent variables.

These nonparametric tests were performed because of heterocedasticity con-cerning the seven dependent variables. We used the Bonferroni procedure tocontrol the experiment error rate, establishing α = 0.05/7.

The results show that there were statistically significant differences between thetwo groups in the total number of words in which the initial phoneme was correctlyphonetized (U = 16.00, p < .000). They also show that there were no statisticallysignificant differences in relation to the consonants F (U = 78.00, p = .317), V (U =78.00, p = .317), Z (U = 70.50, p = .253), and P (U = 60.50, p = .144); but therewere such differences for the consonants B (U = 19.50, p < .000) and D (U =18.50, p < .000).

The children in experimental Group 1, who were given a writing programthat worked on the phonetization of occlusive initial phonemes, generalized thephonetization processes and applied them to the fricative phonemes in a posttestsituation, in which they achieved the same results as the children in experimentalGroup 2 when they had to phonetize [ f ], [v], and [z]. The children in experimentalGroup 2 found it more difficult to generalize the phonetization processes in relationto occlusive phonemes, and they did not do as well as the experimental Group 1children when it came to phonetizing [b] and [d], although they did obtain similarresults with [ p].


Table 3. Means and standarddeviations for the number ofwords phonetized in the posttest

M SD

G.1 0.77 1.17G.2 4.15 3.63

Note: The values are for the numberof words in which the children in thetwo experimental groups phonetizedthe second phonemes (vowels) insteadof the first phonemes (consonants) inthe posttest. G.1, occlusive phonemewriting program using [b], [p]; G.2,fricative phoneme writing programusing [ f ], [v].

When the children from both groups did not use a correct consonant to representthe initial phoneme of the words, what did they use? They generally used a correctvowel corresponding to the second phoneme of the word. Table 3 provides themeans and standard deviations for the words in which a correct vowel was usedinstead of the correct initial consonant by the two groups.

Thus, it seems that when children were not able to correctly spell the firstphoneme they generally spelled the second one, a vowel, which in the Portugueselanguage is easier.

DISCUSSION

This study confirms that conducting intervention programs that work on preschoolchildren’s writing leads to an evolution in the children’s thinking about the char-acteristics of the written code. We found that the children in both experimentalgroups, whose writing was graphoperceptive at the time of the pretest, startedphonetizing their writing in the posttest. It would thus seem that the tasks thatwere put to them—to think about their writing and compare it with the phonetizedwriting of a hypothetical schoolmate—made it possible to initiate metalinguis-tic thinking processes at the level of segments of speech and print and of therelationships between them, which in turn modeled a conceptual understandingthat the code is a system for writing down sounds. This interpretation is in linewith those that Treiman (2004) posits when she says that “The spelling task mayprompt children to use more systematic methods of deriving spelling from sounds”(p. 30).

Given the initial-letter hypothesis, according to which the systematic mappingbetween the oral and the written occurs first in relation to initial letters (Bowman& Treiman, 2002), we focused in more detail on an analysis of the phonetization ofthe first letter in words. Our results indicate that the number of words in which theinitial phonemes were correctly phonetized in the posttest situation was greater in


the children in experimental Group 1, whose writing program used the occlusiveinitial phonemes [b] and [ p], than it was for those in experimental Group 2, whosewriting program used the fricative initial phonemes [ f ] and [v].

This advantage is because the children in experimental Group 1 generalized thephonetization procedures that they had learned over the course of the program toall of the phonemes they had not worked on: the fricative phonemes [ f ], [v], and [z]and the occlusive [d]. Although the children in experimental Group 2 generalizedthe phonetization procedures to the fricative phoneme [z] and the occlusive [ p],they did not manage to do so for two of the occlusive phonemes ([b] and [d]),which they had not worked on in their program. These data, in addition to bothgroups phonetizing virtually 100% of the fricative phonemes, confirms that it iseasier to acquire the phonetization of fricative phonemes than that of occlusiveones.

There is a set of data that supports the idea that the properties of the words thatserved as the basis for the work with experimental Group 1 were more complexfrom a linguistic analysis point of view. Various studies show that children find iteasier to identify fricative consonants than occlusive ones in the oral flow of words(Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991, 1993; Liberman et al., 1974; Treiman, 1998).This conclusion is linked to the considerable difference in the acoustic realizationof occlusives, depending on the vowels that follow them, which makes the taskof identifying these particular sounds as separate units more complex (Byrne &Fielding-Barnsley, 1991, 1993). It is therefore more difficult to associate themwith the corresponding letters. Thus, it seems to us that because the children inexperimental Group 1 were led to think about the relationships between speechand writing under linguistically more complex conditions, it made it easier forthem to generalize phonetization procedures to the writing of sounds that were notworked on in any way. The more widespread mobilization of vowels to representthe sounds in the first syllable by the children in experimental Group 2 whencompared to the children in experimental Group 1 corroborates this interpretation.A study by Pollo, Kessler, and Treiman (2005), which analyzed the differencesin phonological spelling with Brazilian and US preschool children, indicated thatthe Brazilian children were three times more likely to start a word with a vowelletter than the US children; this could be explained by the different properties ofthe writing system to which children have been exposed. Thus, the interventionprogram of experimental Group 1 is more effective in the sense that it counteractsthis natural tendency in the Portuguese language and successfully promotes thephonetic identity of consonants.

Regarding the phonetization of the phoneme [ p], in which the two groups’ per-formance was quite similar, our results show that the children from experimentalGroup 2 were able to generalize the phonetization procedures they had learned overthe course of the program with fricative phonemes to the occlusive phoneme [ p].These results were quite unexpected because there was no evidence concerningeither the frequency or the familiarity that can justify the generalization to thisocclusive consonant instead of the other occlusive consonants [b] and [d]. Thisissue should be investigated in future research.

The existence of a generalization of phonetization procedures in both groupssuggests that this type of program leads children to acquire the notion that the


phonemes they identify in words should be represented by letters that contain theapplicable sound. It also suggests that they simultaneously acquire phonemicidentification skills, that is, the ability to perceive phonemes as stable iden-tities within different words, which they then apply when they analyze newwords.

The Anglo-Saxon literature often discusses the acquisition of the alphabeticprinciple as depending on phonemic awareness and on the facilitating role thatletter–sound correspondences play as a support in the process of becoming awareof phonemic entities (Byrne, 1997, 1998). For instance, Castles and Coltheart(2004) assume that letter–sound knowledge enables children to perform phonemictasks because this allows them to manipulate phonemes by manipulating ortho-graphic images of words. Other authors, such as Hulme, Caravolas, Malkova,and Brigstocke (2005), consider that the ability of phonemic manipulation canbe developed in the absence of knowledge about the corresponding letters. Ourresults concerning the generalization across phonemes in writing reveals the pos-sibility of the existence of a complex interaction between the processes involvedin becoming aware of the oral units in speech and the understanding of the wayin which the written code works that children achieve that are attributable to theirinvented spelling activities and their reflection about the nature of the writtencode.

However, this understanding appears to be mediated by the difficulties posed tothe children by the characteristics of the phonological structure of words and thearticulatory properties of the sounds that make them up.

We point out two limitations of this study: the first one concerns the natureof the activities developed by the control group and the second one concerns theway children’s knowledge of letters was evaluated. For the first point, it would berelevant in future research to use a control group with other linguistic training thatis useful for writing skills, rather than using a control group that only classifiedgeometrical shapes. For the second point, it would be relevant to evaluate not onlythe knowledge of the names of the letters but also the knowledge of their phoneticcounterpart.

CONCLUSIONS

We believe that programs that work on the level of writing and that lead children tothink about the relationships between speech and writing under linguistically morecomplex conditions (i.e., those involving the mobilization of occlusive phonemes)seem to be more effective in the generalization of phonetization procedures thanprograms that mobilize phonemes that are easier to isolate within the acousticflow, such as fricative phonemes.

To the extent that the properties of both words and the sounds that compose themappear to mediate a child’s path to the understanding of the alphabetic principleand its application to writing tasks, it would be useful to extend this type of studyto the analysis of a larger number of linguistic variables. By this we mean notonly the study of different types of contrast between phonemes but also the cross-referencing of these variables with the frequency with which the various lettersappear in written Portuguese.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis work was supported by FCT Grant POCI 2010.

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