Conference on Writing Development July 2, 2009

1. Learning to UseAlphabetic Writing Conference on Writing DevelopmentJuly 2, 2009 Charles Read University of Wisconsin - Madison

2. Alphabets currently in usefrom Omniglot.com

3. Examples of Japanese Writingfrom Wikipedia: Japanese Writing System

4. Chinese charactersby Benjamin L. Read

5. Initial Steps • Knowing that symbols represent an utterance, such as a word or sentence. • [Scribble] “says ‘Let’s go.’”

6. Initial Steps • Knowing that symbols represent an utterance, such as a word or sentence. • Recognize or manipulate conventional symbols, such as letters.

7. Initial Steps • Knowing that symbols represent an utterance, such as a word or sentence. • Recognize or manipulate conventional symbols, such as letters. • Associate letter(s) with word(s). • “M is for Max.”

8. Key Steps (1) • Acquiring phonemic awareness • The concept of sounds within syllables. • Not all are pronounceable in isolation • Those that are pronounceable don’t sound like language.

9. Signs of Phonemic Awareness • Pronounce or name individual sounds, such as “first sound” in a word. • Manipulate sounds: • Add, delete, move sounds within a syllable

10. Key Steps (2) • Knowing that spellings (one or more letters each) represent those sounds. • The Alphabetic Principle • Not just “M is for Max,” but “M is for [m]”

11. Phonemic Awareness and the Alphabetic Principle [PA and AP] are BIG STEPS.

12. Phonemic Awareness • May not develop outside of instruction in alphabetic writing. • Morais, et al.: studies in Portugal: • Illiterates can detect sound similarity (e.g., rhyme), but cannot analyze a syllable into its phonemes (e.g., delete an initial sound).

13. Study in China

14. Syntheses of Research • Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998) Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. National Academy Press. • http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6023 • Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read. (2000). National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. • http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications

15. Both conclude PA is essential • Snow et al.: • [PA is] “key to understanding the logic of the alphabetic principle and thus to the learnability of phonics and spelling.” (p. 52) • National Reading Panel: • “Teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective across all the literary domains and outcomes.” (pp. 2-3)

16. From Carol Chomsky, 1979.

17. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR • Carol Chomsky, 1979. “Approaching Reading Through Invented Spelling”

18. YUTS ALADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOTFLEPR Some of the standard spellings

19. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR Not standard, but phonetically accurate

20. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR A letter-name spelling.

21. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR

22. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR Another letter-name spelling?

23. YUTS A LADE YET FEHEG AND HE KOT FLEPR E spells /ɪ/ as well as /i/.

24. Application to Instruction • Are there stages in initial writing development? • Are there best practices in initial instruction?

25. What have we learned? • PA and AP are necessary steps, difficult for some learners, but can be taught. • Learning standard correspondences and ‘rules’ is significant in English but not so conceptually challenging as PA. • Initial learning is a creative cognitive process, not merely memorization of sound- spelling correspondences.