Liliana Tolchinsky

The development of word segmentation and writing in two scripts

Abstract This study examined the changes in word segmentation and word writing from preschool through second grade in Hebrew and Spanish, two languages which use different scripts. Participants were 56 Spanish-speaking and 59 Hebrew-speaking children from middle-class public schools in Barcelona and Tel Aviv. Word segmentation developed with grade level from segmentation according to syllables to segmentation into subsyllabic elements. Very few children were able to completely segment words into consonants and vowels. The syllable was found to be the most important unit of segmentation across grade levels and in both language groups, although to a greater degree in Spanish. Two oral segmentation strategies were language specific: oral spelling in the Spanish group and pronunciation of consonants in isolation in the Hebrew group. Word writing evolved with grade level from formally constrained writing through syllabic mapping to alphabetic writing, according to the particular constraints of each script.

Visual spatial skill: A consequence of learning to read?

Does learning to read influence ones visual skill? In Study 1, kindergartners from Hong Kong, Korea, Israel, and Spain were tested on word reading and a task of visual spatial skill. Chinese and Korean kindergartners significantly outperformed Israeli and Spanish readers on the visual task. Moreover, in all cultures except Korea, good readers scored significantly higher on the visual task than did less good readers. In Study 2, we followed 215 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners across 1year, with word reading and visual skills tested twice. In this study, word reading at Time 1 by itself predicted 13% of unique variance in visual skill at Time 2. Together, these results underscore the potential importance of the process of learning to read for shaping ones visual spatial skill development.

Maternal mediation of writing in Chinese children

Two scales of mothers’ mediation of their childrens writing based on Aram and Levin (2001) were developed and tested in 67 mother–child Hong Kong Chinese dyads in three grade levels – second-year kindergarten, third-year kindergarten, and first grade. With childrens ages, grades, and non-verbal IQs, as well as mothers’ education levels statistically controlled in a regression equation, the four strategies of the ‘Print Mediation’ scale, a measure of mother–child joint writing productions, explained a unique 10% of the variance in childrens word reading. These four strategies tended to change with age such that higher autonomy was more common among older children and lower autonomy was more prevalent among younger children. In a separate hierarchical regression equation, the ‘Literate Mediation’ scale, tapping specific writing strategies, explained a unique 8–11% of the variance in childrens word reading. A prevalence of copying strategies tended to be negatively associated with reading skill and a prevalence of morphologically based strategies tended to be positively associated with reading skill, even apart from age and grade level. Findings demonstrate some strong developmental trends in the writing process but also suggest that a more analytic approach to Chinese character writing may be helpful for literacy development, even among the youngest children.

Childhood Conceptions of Literacy

This chapter presents a developmental perspective on literacy that explores children’s evolving knowledge even prior to being formally taught to read and write. It starts by comparing four different approaches within this perspective: (1) the earliest Vygotskian, (2) the constructivist, (3) the socio-cultural and (4) the “invented spelling” approach. It then advances to describing the methods used to gather toddlers and preschoolers ideas of literacy and presents the main conclusions on children’s ideas about the practices of reading and writing, texts and discursive genres, the formal features of written marks and written strings and the representational meaning of writing. Finally, it concludes with two of the contributions of developmental approaches to literacy, which consist in turning literacy into a domain of knowledge that deserves to be studied developmentally and bringing back literacy activities to preschool education.

Las restricciones del conocimiento notacional

ResumenSolo los seres humanos utilizan herramientas para dejar trazas permanentes de sus actos comunicativos. Esta capacidad notacional se manifiesta en distintos sistemas notacionales: dibujo, escritura o notacion numerica que se distinguen entre si por sus elementos, por sus regularidades combinatorias y por cumplir distintas funciones. En este trabajo exploramos como comprenden los ninos entre 3:8 y 6:6 anos de edad las relaciones entre sistemas utilizando dos situaciones de produccion de notaciones. En la primera los ninos debian escribir que y cuantos objetos aparecen dibujados en una serie de tarjetas. El objeto de esta situacion fue verificar sus posibilidades de producir notaciones diferenciadas segun las restricciones formales y adecuadas a las funciones especificas de cada sistema. En la segunda, los ninos debian inventar letras, numeros y palabras que no existen. El proposito fue averiguar en que medida las restricciones formales y la adecuacion funcional que hubieran demostrado en la primera s...

Pedagogical Practices in the Teaching of Early Literacy in Spain: Voices from the Classroom and from the Official Curricula.

Children’s success in learning to read in the first grade is crucial for their ultimate success in schooling. This study aimed at identifying self‐declared practices in preschool and first grade in Spain and contrasting these practices with the official recommendations for the initial teaching of reading and writing. A characterisation of the ways of teaching and of the broader institutional context which can support or hinder teachers’ work is fundamental for determining the best conditions for successful literacy learning. A 30‐item questionnaire was used to collect teachers’ preferences on a six‐point Likert scale describing the frequency with which they reported adopting a certain practice in four areas: (1) organisation of the class, (2) planning, (3) activities and content, and (4) evaluation. A total of 2250 teachers, 1193 from preschool and 1057 from first year of primary school from nine geographic areas of Spain responded to the questionnaire. A cluster analysis of teachers’ responses revealed three practice profiles. The first gathers teachers’ preferences for explicit instructional practices, highly focused on the learning outcomes but less concerned with autonomous writing and occasional learning. The second brings together situational practices, more concerned with spontaneous writing and occasional learning than with explicit instruction and learning outcomes. The third reunites multidimensional practices focusing both on explicit instruction and leaning outcomes and on autonomous writing. The distribution of these practice profiles differed significantly with the teacher’s age, school level (preschool or primary school), type of school (private, public or subsidised), the location of the school, level of participation in in‐training service and the self‐declared methodology for teaching literacy. In the official recommendations, Andalusia and Catalonia support practices included under the situational oriented profile whereas Madrid appears more closely aligned with the instructional profile of practices

Conocimientos iniciales y logros de los alumnos en el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura

Resumen El aprendizaje de la lengua escrita, como cualquier otro aprendizaje, es un resultado conjunto del aprendiz y del entorno. En un primer estudio nos propusimos detectar los conocimientos que los niños demuestran en distintos ámbitos relacionados con el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura al inicio del último curso de Educación Infantil y al finalizar primero de Educación Primaria y establecer el peso relativo del nivel inicial de conocimientos en sus logros de aprendizaje. Participaron en el estudio 213 alumnos de diferentes zonas geográficas de España que concurrían a distintos tipos de centro y a aulas con diferentes prácticas docentes. Encontramos una incidencia significativa del nivel inicial de conocimientos en los logros de final de primero de Educación Primaria aunque se identificaron itinerarios de aprendizaje más o menos exitoso a partir del mismo nivel inicial. No se observaron diferencias significativas por zona geográfica, tipo de centro o perfil de prácticas docentes. En un segundo estudio, nos detuvimos en cuatro niños que presentaban itinerarios de aprendizaje diferentes con el propósito de descubrir las características de las interacciones de aula que puedan explicar esta diversidad de itinerarios. El seguimiento individualizado ha posibilitado descubrir ciertos procesos relacionados con el control por parte del aprendiz de los objetivos de la tarea, de la interacción con el adulto y con pares que parecen contribuir a un mejor aprendizaje.

Las condiciones del aprendizaje de la lengua escrita

Resumen La comprensión de las condiciones que influyen en el aprendizaje de la lengua escrita constituye un asunto de crucial interés científico, educativo y social. En este artículo, presentación del monográfico, las autoras reflexionan acerca de los distintos aspectos involucrados en este ámbito a partir de la respuesta obtenida a la invitación de participar con trabajos sobre dicho asunto. El análisis realizado permite detectar y discutir algunas preferencias en la investigación sobre las condiciones del aprendizaje de la lengua escrita, entre ellas: énfasis en los momentos iniciales del aprendizaje más que en el desarrollo posterior; centración en factores cognitivos por encima de factores afectivos o ecológicos; utilización de tareas estructuradas para la obtención de datos más que observación etnográfica, foco en aspectos de escritura más que en comprensión lectora o en las interacciones entre lectura y escritura. Se argumenta la necesidad de considerar problemas y variables del aprendizaje de la lengua escrita actualmente poco atendidos para disponer de una perspectiva más comprensiva sobre la lectura y la escritura como herramientas para la transformación del conocimiento que se desarrollan a lo largo de toda la vida.

Al pie de la letra

ResumenEl objetivo de este trabajo es explicar una linea de investigacion en el campo del conocimiento notacional y del lenguaje escrito. El surgimiento de la idea de estudiar estos dominios de conocimiento asi como las sucesivas investigaciones que se realizaron se presentaran en el marco de las ideas psicologos, psicologuisticas y educacionales a las cuales estas investigaciones respondieron, tanto por acuerdo como por oposicion. Para completar nuestro objetivo hemos decidido hacer un ejercicio de estilo, un ejercicio en el cual transgredimos un texto por excelencia: el Genesis.Este ejercicio sirvio para organizar nuestra exposicion y para ejemplificar uno de los sentidos en los cuales utilizamos la nocion de transgresion. Transgredir en este sentido es una manera de cambiar, distinta de la de errar porque implica un conocimiento conciente de la restriccion, regla, norma o convencion que rige aquello que se transgrede. El objetivo de la educacion es, o deberia ser, promover el cambio, para ello debe log...

Growth of text-embedded lexicon in Catalan: From childhood to adolescence

Lexical development is a key facet of later language development. To characterize the linguistic knowledge of school age children, performance in the written modality must also be considered. This study tracks the growth of written text-embedded lexicon in Catalan-speaking children and adolescents. Participants (N = 2161), aged from 5 to 16 years produced six different texts: a film explanation, a film recommendation, a joke telling and definitions of a noun, a verb and an adjective. The resultant corpus of 11,332 texts was analyzed using four distributional measures of lexical development: word length, lexical density, use of adjectives and nominalizations. Heylighen’s F-measure of level of text formality was also computed. Word length, use of adjectives and nominalizations were powerful indicators of lexical development. Text type and home language had an effect on these measures. Lexical density showed no clear developmental change, and did not vary by type of text. Heylighen’s F-measure was a weaker developmental indicator. Educational implications are discussed.