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The cradle of culture and what children know about writing and numbers before being taught
Abstract
This book provides a thrilling description of preliterate children's developing ideas about writing and numerals, and it illustrates well the many ways in which cultural artifacts influence the mind and vice versa. Remarkably, children treat writing and numerals as distinct even before they have received any formal training on the topic, and well before they learn how to use writing to represent messages and numerals to represent quantities. In this revolutionary new book, Liliana Tolchinsky argues that preliterate children's experiences with writing and numerals play an essential and previously unsuspected role in children's subsequent development. In this view, learning notations, such as writing is not just a matter of acquiring new instruments for communicating existing knowledge. Rather, there is a continual interaction between children's understanding of the features of a notational system and their understanding of the corresponding domain of knowledge. The acquisition of an alphabetic writing system transforms children's view of language, and the acquisition of a formal system of enumeration transforms children's understanding of numbers. Written in an engaging narrative style, and richly illustrated with historical examples, case studies, and charming descriptions of children's behavior, this book is aimed not only at cognitive scientists, but also at educators, parents, and anyone interested in how children develop in a cultural context. © 2003 by Lawrenee Erlbaum Associates, Ine. All rights reserved.
... Recommending dramatic play and block play, Collins and Laski maintain that both children's literacy and mathematics can benefit from these play contexts. Other studies including those by Tolchinsky (2003) and Teubal et al. (2007), investigated the relationship between written and mathematical signs, showing that young children could use their personal graphical marks and signs to make meanings and to represent and communicate their thinking. From their earliest beginnings with marks made in contexts that can be understood as mathematical, children's developing understanding and facility with signs gradually encompasses the orthodoxies of the signs of their culture, the literate aspects of mathematics. ...
... A number of researchers have investigated the emergence of symbol systems in early childhood. For example, Tolchinsky (2003) made an extensive study of young children's understandings "of writing and numbers before being taught", investigating children's own ideas about notational systems and the impact of culture on their signs. Children's earliest writing and mathematical inscriptions relate to Lancaster's (2014) research findings of the marks and signs very young children (under 3 years) employ when drawing freely. ...
... An extensive body of research exists into young children's emergent beginnings with writing (e.g., Clay, 1975;Kress, 1997), with some studies into emergent signs for mathematics (e.g., Brizuela, 2004;Carruthers & Worthington, 2005Hughes, 1986;Tolchinsky, 2003). Munn (1994) upholds a view of children's functional use of signs for mathematics as "essentially a literate strategy" (p. ...
The aims of this thesis are to investigate the evolution of young children’s graphical signs and texts, chosen and used freely by them to communicate ideas. Until now, no previous studies have been found that researched the very beginnings of young children’s signs and symbols in depth, in contexts that can be understood as mathematical, making this research unique. The research began by determining if the children explored aspects of mathematics in their pretend play linked to their funds of knowledge. To achieve this, the study documents children’s interest in exploring and communicating through their literacies, and the types of signs young children use to represent their thinking, including those to communicate their mathematical thinking. The main focus of the study is children’s use of their Mathematical Graphics. Rather than viewing young children’s mathematics from a single, subject-based discipline, this study takes the child’s perspective, mathematics seen within the context of all the child’s meaning-making and learning, children having considerable agency as active learners. The thesis reveals a number of interesting findings that are direct outcomes of the democratic culture and open ethos of the nursery setting, coupled with the teachers’ deep understandings of pretend play; of early mathematical development; graphicacy and emergent learning that together support children’s learning.
... An emerging body of evidence shows that young children develop a substantial knowledge of Arabic numerals from a much earlier age than previously assumed (Mix et al., 2014;Munn, 1998;Tolchinsky, 2003). This suggests that this knowledge emerges long before children start to receive intentional and systematic instruction in these written symbols in primary school. ...
... Altogether these results suggest that, from a remarkably young age on, children make sense of Arabic numerals they encounter in everyday life (Mix et al., 2014). In fact, children may familiarize themselves with these Arabic symbols as they frequently observe them on a calendar, a bus, an advertisement, or a sports shirt, in the same way they become familiar with letters by being exposed to environmental print in their everyday surroundings, such as print found on signs, number plates, and product labels (Hughes, 1986;LeFevre et al., 2009;Mix et al., 2014;Neumann et al., 2013;Tolchinsky, 2003). Moreover, recent evidence has shown that children's Arabic numeral knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of later mathematics achievement (Göbel et al., 2014;Habermann et al., 2020;. ...
... Children are exposed to Arabic numerals from birth and develop substantial knowledge of these Arabic number symbols long before they start to receive intentional and systematic instruction in these symbols in kindergarten or primary school (Munn, 1998;Neumann et al., 2013;Tolchinsky, 2003). It can be assumed that children's informal experiences and social interactions with their everyday environment bring these Arabic numerals to their attention (e.g., as children can observe them on a calendar, a bus, an advertisement, a sports shirt, etc.), in the same way they become familiar with letters by being exposed to environmental print (e.g., print found on signs, number plates, and product labels) in their everyday surroundings (Hughes, 1986;LeFevre et al., 2009;Mix et al., 2014;Neumann et al., 2013;Tolchinsky, 2003), but it remains unclear by which mechanism they learn to understand these Arabic numerals and how this knowledge contributes to the development of their mathematical abilities. ...
Children start formal schooling with large individual differences in their mathematical competence. While some children can already perform simple calculations, others are still learning how to count small numerosities. This large variety in mathematical competence at the start of formal schooling can be explained by the early mathematical abilities children use in explicit mathematical situations, but to some extent also by their tendencies to spontaneously focus on mathematical aspects in everyday situations. Previous research has shown the importance of these spontaneous attentional processes particularly for children’s spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON). The present dissertation aimed to contribute to this emerging field of spontaneous mathematical focusing tendencies by proposing a new construct of spontaneous focusing on Arabic number symbols (SFONS) different from SFON and investigating its role in early mathematical development in four related studies.
In a first study, we measured SFONS for the first time and explored its concurrent association with SFON, numerical abilities, and teacher ratings of mathematical competence in the first, second, and third year of kindergarten (Chapter 2). We found large individual differences in children’s SFONS and significant associations with their numerical abilities and teacher ratings of their mathematical competence. The second study further explored the validity of the novel SFONS construct by investigating its factor structure and exploring its unique contribution to numerical abilities and mathematics achievement in the second year of kindergarten (Chapter 3). We obtained empirical evidence for the hypothesized two-factor structure of SFON and SFONS and found that the latter uniquely predicted numerical abilities and mathematics achievement above age, parental education, spatial and verbal ability, and SFON. In a third study, we investigated the structure of children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies and their longitudinal associations with numerical abilities and mathematics achievement from the second year of kindergarten until first grade (Chapter 4). Results again provided evidence for the distinctiveness of SFONS and SFON and revealed moderate associations with numerical abilities and mathematics achievement across development. In a final study, we explored the origins of individual differences in children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies by relating SFON and SFONS to the home numeracy environment in the second and third year of kindergarten (Chapter 5). We found no significant associations between children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies and the frequency of numeracy activities at home and their parents’ numeracy expectations.
These four studies are preceded by an introductory chapter (Chapter 1) and followed by a general discussion chapter wherein the main conclusions and the theoretical, methodological, and educational implications of these four studies are discussed (Chapter 6).
... Also in this first phase, around 2 and a half years, an attempt to imitate the writing of adults, also called "scriptural writing", can be verified, which the child matures over time and then becomes concrete with the entrance to the elementary school. In conjunction with this the child begins to acquire a posture suitable for writing, characterized by high head, loose muscle tension and detachment of the bust from the supporting surface (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982;Sulzby & Teale, 1991;Tolchinsky, 2003;Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998. ...
... This leads to confirm that children, preschoolers, unknowingly possess the general and specific knowledge of their writing system. Furthermore, the child's writing competence is a slow (reversible) dynamic process that emerges during the preschool period (Tolchinsky, 2003). The child is experienced as a writer even before his entry into kindergarten. ...
... The basis of this research was the recent studies conducted on this topic (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982, Gibson & Levin, 1975Sulzby, 1989;Sulzby & Teale, 1991;Tolchinsky, 2003;Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998Puranik, Petscher & Lonigan, 2014), but in particular those conducted by Loningan (2011Loningan ( , 2013, from which it emerged that writing develops according to a linear sequence and also its teaching should take place sequentially. The aim of the present study was to investigate the learning process of written language in preschool children. ...
... Examining how young children interpret and understand the cultural rules that underlie the use of numerals in everyday life is highly significant and in the early years, "cultural rules are possibly the most important thing for children to learn" (Munn & Kleinberg, 2003, p. 53), as they provide the fundamental basis upon which school learning is built. While children's understanding of the primary rules, i.e., the conventions underlying the written number system has been researched (e.g., Brizuela, 2004;Johansson, 2005;Mix et al., 2014;Tolchinsky, 2003;Zhou & Wang, 2004) and theorized for mathematics pedagogy (Coles & Sinclair, 2017;Hiebert, 1988), there is limited research about children's understanding of the cultural uses of written numerals in everyday contexts (e.g., Sinclair & Sinclair, 1984, 1986. Sinclair's (1984, 1986) research revealed age-related differences in responses provided by 4-6-year-old children about the meaning of environmental numerical print in photographs selected by the researchers and the frequency of different types of responses across age groups. ...
... In everyday life and before school, children encounter written numerals in their environment that may have quantitative purposes, to denote, for example, cardinality, but they also encounter numbers in the environment that serve "social uses" and "nonquantitative purposes" (Tolchinsky, 2003, p. 110) and which are underpinned by social knowledge, such as, numbers on buses, phone numbers, and barcode numbers. Tolchinsky (2003) further notes that the meanings and purposes of written numerals in everyday life constitute part of the cultural and social knowledge that is "embodied in the many cultural artefacts used in daily life and transmitted through social uses" (p. 110). ...
Supporting children’s understanding of the everyday, cultural use of written numerals is highly significant, as it is this understanding that gives meaning to classroom conversations on the purposes of written numbers. This paper presents findings from a phenomenographic study of the qualitatively different ways in which 3–5-year-old children interpret the meanings and use of numerals in everyday contexts. The study involved a volunteer sample of 37 preschool children. With their family’s support, children played a Number Spotting game, taking photographs of numerals in their environments. These photographs were supplemented with other photographs selected by the researchers and used in individual photo-elicitation interviews with children. We collected data on children’s interpretations of a range of examples of numerals used to denote quantity, order and measurement, and numerals used as labels/identifiers. The findings document qualitatively different categories that capture the range of children’s expressed conceptions as well as the critical aspects of variation that underpin how qualitatively different categories of conceptions differ or relate to each other. The study provides original insights into the nature and structure of children’s awareness of the cultural uses of written numerals. The findings can support early mathematics teaching to make meaningful connections between the knowledge that children develop outside of school and the new knowledge about written numbers that they develop in formal education.
... One of the realities that looms large, starting early and given a tremendous boost with schooling, is ongoing "interaction with notational systems [which] not only affects children's developing ideas about the systems, but also their intuitions about the domains of reference [what notations represent]. Writing and numerals shape children's linguistic intuitions" (Tolchinsky (2003): 219); furthermore, the characteristics of specific notational systems "transform every aspect of life that is affected by notations" (Tolchinsky (2003):213-4), all of which is evident in much of our metalinguistic activity. Although the social technology of writing has often been viewed simply as visible speech, the relationship between speech as an interactional craft and writing as a technique is anything but simple. ...
... One of the realities that looms large, starting early and given a tremendous boost with schooling, is ongoing "interaction with notational systems [which] not only affects children's developing ideas about the systems, but also their intuitions about the domains of reference [what notations represent]. Writing and numerals shape children's linguistic intuitions" (Tolchinsky (2003): 219); furthermore, the characteristics of specific notational systems "transform every aspect of life that is affected by notations" (Tolchinsky (2003):213-4), all of which is evident in much of our metalinguistic activity. Although the social technology of writing has often been viewed simply as visible speech, the relationship between speech as an interactional craft and writing as a technique is anything but simple. ...
This is a modest experiment in imaging language as an interactional craft, that ranges over reflexivity, interaction, transcription, contact languages, language diversity, information theory, and languaging.
... Concepts of laterality/directionality, phonemic awareness, knowledge of alphabet letters and formation, and name printing were commonly seen in both the neurodevelopmental and emergent literacy approaches. Children possess knowledge of print concepts even before formal handwriting instruction, as observed in their early attempts at output (Adi-Japha & Freeman, 2001;Cabell et al., 2013;Levin & Bus, 2003;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011Tolchinsky, 2003;Treiman & Yin, 2011). Children will demonstrate directionality/laterality, spacing, sizing, and linear placement in their scribbles, pseudo-letters, shapes and symbols (Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Shah et al., 2016;Story, 2008). ...
... Children will demonstrate directionality/laterality, spacing, sizing, and linear placement in their scribbles, pseudo-letters, shapes and symbols (Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Shah et al., 2016;Story, 2008). There is a developmental progression from drawing to writing their thoughts and observations, along with their expanding knowledge of print concepts (Adi-Japha & Freeman, 2001;Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;DeFauw, 2016;Hall et al., 2015;Levin & Bus, 2003;Podobnik, 2017;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011;Tolchinsky, 2003;Treiman & Yin, 2011). ...
An integral part of occupational therapy practice in early intervention involves assessment and treatment of pre-printing challenges and determination of printing readiness; however, the evidence to inform best practice has not been thoroughly investigated. This paper is part of a larger scoping review that focused on theoretical frameworks for printing readiness and evidence for pre-printing development and skills. This companion paper undertook a critical evaluation of pre-printing interventions and programs, based on a new proposed integrated theoretical framework outlined in Klein et al. (2021, same issue). Of the 98 articles included in the scoping review, 12 were intervention-based studies. Most of these intervention studies were rated at a low level of evidence and often utilized a bottom-up approach for intervention, which is maligned with current best practice principles. Direct task-based learning is considered best practice for handwriting interventions; however, there is a paucity of research studies at higher levels of evidence that evaluate this approach for pre-printing intervention. Commercially available pre-printing programs that incorporate tenets of an integrated theoretical framework for printing readiness exist; however, there is a gap in the literature evaluating their effectiveness. Empirically evaluated pre-printing interventions and programs that are rooted in an integrated approach are needed, drawing on principles from emergent literacy and neurodevelopmental frameworks, embracing top-down, task-based learning. Development and use of these programs in early intervention will facilitate collaborative partnerships between occupational therapists, educators, and parents for developmentally appropriate pre-printing intervention that fit within curriculum expectations. As so few evidence-based pre-printing programs exist, once developed, there will be a critical need to research their effectiveness.
... Concepts of laterality/directionality, phonemic awareness, knowledge of alphabet letters and formation, and name printing were commonly seen in both the neurodevelopmental and emergent literacy approaches. Children possess knowledge of print concepts even before formal handwriting instruction, as observed in their early attempts at output (Adi-Japha & Freeman, 2001;Cabell et al., 2013;Levin & Bus, 2003;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011Tolchinsky, 2003;Treiman & Yin, 2011). Children will demonstrate directionality/laterality, spacing, sizing, and linear placement in their scribbles, pseudo-letters, shapes and symbols (Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Shah et al., 2016;Story, 2008). ...
... Children will demonstrate directionality/laterality, spacing, sizing, and linear placement in their scribbles, pseudo-letters, shapes and symbols (Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;Moomaw & Hieronymus, 2001;Shah et al., 2016;Story, 2008). There is a developmental progression from drawing to writing their thoughts and observations, along with their expanding knowledge of print concepts (Adi-Japha & Freeman, 2001;Byington & Kim, 2017;Cabell et al., 2013;DeFauw, 2016;Hall et al., 2015;Levin & Bus, 2003;Podobnik, 2017;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011;Tolchinsky, 2003;Treiman & Yin, 2011). ...
Occupational therapists often address pre-printing skills in young children, but the evidence supporting such practice has not been thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this scoping review was to summarize and evaluate pre-printing literature and outline a theoretical framework to inform best practice. Utilizing PRISMA guidelines and scoping review methodology, two independent reviewers selected articles for abstract and full-text review and rated the level of evidence of each article. Most of the 98 articles that were included were low levels of evidence, often based on “expert” opinion. Two theoretical approaches emerged based on printing skill prerequisites and development. Occupational therapy research appears to follow a neurodevelopmental approach, which describes a prescriptive developmental sequence with direct instruction, leading to mastery of pre-printing shapes, strokes and skills. An emergent literacy approach is prominent in education literature. This approach also incorporates developmental considerations, but is less prescriptive and more focused on a literacy-rich, curricular approach to pre-printing instruction. An emergent literacy approach encourages children to experiment with printing, matching task demands with the child’s natural printing development, without prescriptive mastery of certain skills. We propose an integrated theoretical framework, to capture both educator and therapist expertise, to facilitate a more collaborative approach when guiding pre-printing development both for typically developing children and children with developmental challenges. Evidence from this scoping review will be used to develop a pre-printing program based on an integrated theoretical framework. This combined approach may prevent confusion and conflicting information about printing readiness, and thus allow occupational therapists, early childhood educators, kindergarten teachers, and parents to provide consistent guidance and learning opportunities for young children to learn pre-printing skills.
... Similarities exist too between young children's emergent writing and their emergent mathematical inscriptions (e.g. Carruthers, 1997;Carruthers & Worthington, 2006;Clay, 1975;Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979;Tolchinsky, 2003). Young children's signs evolve over time into rule-based structures (Langacker, 2008), a process of grammaticisation, or usage-based theory of language acquisition (Worthington, Dobber, & Van Oers, 2019, p. 93). ...
... By 3-4 years of age children also often use horizontal zigzag or wavy lines to signify 'writing' (as in figure 1 and 2), either reflecting an idea of the movement or action of the hand writing, or (to them) its visual pattern (e.g. Carruthers & Worthington, 2006, 2011Tolchinsky, 2003). ...
Young children’s graphical sign lexicons and the emergence of mathematical symbols
Maulfry Worthington
ABSTRACT
Young children’s personal repertoires or lexicons of graphical signs comprise multiple and diverse signs and symbols. These signs support understanding and progress of the symbolic languages of the culturally established, alphanumerical systems, development evolving early in childhood. Investigating language and inscriptional systems - including those that are drawn, written and mathematical - this evidence-based position paper explores the extent to which children’s graphical sign lexicons support their emergent understandings, as they move from intuitive marks and informal signs to formal symbols. These inscriptions are indispensable in communicating ideas, and have significance for the study of young children’s understanding of the abstract symbolic language of mathematics.
... The present research is a pioneering study that examines preschoolers' understanding of the Hebrew writing system via analysis of their private speech, overt talking to oneself that emerges naturally, during spelling of dictated words. Children in literate societies attempt to spell words and produce meaningful graphic symbols before they are formally taught to read or write (Levin & Bus, 2003;Tolchinsky, 2003;Treiman, 2017). Through informal interactions with literate adults Neumann, Hood & Neumann, 2009) and every-day exposure to environmental print (Neumann, Hood & Ford, 2013), children acquire knowledge of the written language (Levin & Ehri, 2009;Puranik & Lonigan, 2012;Treiman, 2017;Treiman & Kessler, 2004). ...
... Through informal interactions with literate adults Neumann, Hood & Neumann, 2009) and every-day exposure to environmental print (Neumann, Hood & Ford, 2013), children acquire knowledge of the written language (Levin & Ehri, 2009;Puranik & Lonigan, 2012;Treiman, 2017;Treiman & Kessler, 2004). For example, preschool children can differentiate letters from drawings and from numbers, correctly name letters, write their names, write others' names, write simple messages, and start to spell simple words (Levin et al., 2005;Levin & Aram, 2006;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011;Tolchinsky, 2003). These abilities suggest the existence of some universal knowledge of writing in preschool children (Levin & Bus, 2003;Puranik & Lonigan, 2011Tolchinsky, Levin, Aram, & McBride-Chang, 2012;Treiman & Kessler, 2004). ...
The study’s aims were to (a) evaluate preschoolers’ use of private speech (overt talk to themselves) during spelling; and (b) study how it is affected by the nature of orthography. Participants were 197 Hebrew speaking Israeli preschoolers (109 girls and 88 boys) (M = 5.6 years). Children spelled 12 words (N = 44 letters) that represented one of three phonological word structures in terms of their consonants (C) and vowels (V): CV.CVC, CV.CV.CVC, and CVC.CVC. Children’s private speech during spelling was documented and analysed. In this paper, we report the private speech units most frequently produced when spelling the letters correctly -- CV, CVC, and letter name. When using private speech, children succeeded in correctly spelling a greater number of letters (30.69%) than when not using private speech (17.64%). The private speech across word structures primarily contained CV units and letter names. Children used private speech mostly for words’ first letters and for CV.CVC words. The structure and position of the letters (first, second, last) had a combined effect on the production of private speech. CV units were used mostly in the first letter of CV.CVC words, CVC units in the second letter of a CVC.CVC word, and letter names in the first letter of CV.CVC words. These findings suggest that preschoolers are aware of the features of the orthography, as exemplified by their internal thought process when spelling words. Adults can support children’s understanding of the written language by encouraging them to use private speech during word writing.
... The preschool years, before children enter kindergarten, is a developmental period where considerable knowledge and skill related to writing develops (Puranik and Lonigan, 2011;Rowe and Wilson, 2015), although early marks take many forms that vary in complexity, conventionality, and intention (Rowe and Neitzel, 2010;Quinn and Bingham, 2019). The development of both print and meaning processes for writing emerge as children make connections between what they intend to communicate (i.e., oral language and intention) and the written symbols they generate to communicate these ideas with others (Tolchinsky, 2003;Rowe and Wilson, 2015). Cognitive conceptual models of early writing development typically organize early writing skills into meaning and print or code-based processes (see Kaderavek et al., 2009;Berninger and Chanquoy, 2012) or knowledge strands (see Puranik and Lonigan, 2014). ...
This study examined the early writing beliefs, ideas, and practices of 54 early childhood teachers. Teachers completed a survey designed to examine their early writing beliefs and provided definitions about early writing development through a written response. Teachers were also observed in their classrooms and writing practices were coded for instructional strategy employed by the teacher (i.e., modeling and scaffolding approaches) and the instructional focus of these interactions with attention to early writing skill. Teachers’ definitions of writing often emphasized specific writing skills, with most teachers emphasizing handwriting. Teachers were observed enacting a range of modeling and scaffolding practices to support early writing, but the majority of interactions focused on handwriting supports. Teachers’ definitions of writing and their responses to the teacher belief survey were unrelated to each other, but differentially related to writing skills emphasized in interactions with children. Teachers who identified more than one writing component in their definition were more likely to enact practices to support children’s writing concept knowledge, while teachers who espoused more developmentally appropriate early writing beliefs on the survey were more likely to engage children in spelling focused interactions. Findings have implications for the study of teachers’ beliefs about writing as well as the need for professional learning supports for preschool teachers.
... They first learn about writing through their Frontiers in Education 03 frontiersin.org interactions with significant adults in their lives (Tolchinsky, 2003(Tolchinsky, , 2008Wasik and Herrmann, 2004). The home literacy environment captures parent-child literacy practices, such as joint book reading, teaching the alphabet, guiding them in spelling their names and words and supporting their phonological awareness via rhyming games. ...
... En algunos contextos y situaciones, objetos e imágenes funcionan como representaciones numéricas motivadas de naturaleza iterativa en las que se repiten n veces los elementos de las colecciones para representar la cantidad n (Tolchinsky, 2003;Wiese, 2003). Las palabras número son abstractas; están ancladas en unidades léxicas en las que un único signo representa un valor cardinal y no existe correspondencia entre las características perceptuales del signo, en este caso auditivas (cuánto dura y cómo se articulan los sonidos al enunciar la palabra número "tres") y las características del referente (el valor cardinal 3). ...
... En algunos contextos y situaciones, objetos e imágenes funcionan como representaciones numéricas motivadas de naturaleza iterativa en las que se repiten n veces los elementos de las colecciones para representar la cantidad n (Tolchinsky, 2003;Wiese, 2003). Las palabras número son abstractas; están ancladas en unidades léxicas en las que un único signo representa un valor cardinal y no existe correspondencia entre las características perceptuales del signo, en este caso auditivas (cuánto dura y cómo se articulan los sonidos al enunciar la palabra número "tres") y las características del referente (el valor cardinal 3). ...
... They first learn about writing through their Frontiers in Education 03 frontiersin.org interactions with significant adults in their lives (Tolchinsky, 2003(Tolchinsky, , 2008Wasik and Herrmann, 2004). The home literacy environment captures parent-child literacy practices, such as joint book reading, teaching the alphabet, guiding them in spelling their names and words and supporting their phonological awareness via rhyming games. ...
The study examined how parents’ understanding of early writing development was reflected in how they analyzed anonymous preschool children’s writings and the support they offered to promote these children’s writing. It also assessed how this general knowledge related to their own children’s early writing development. The participants were 274 parents and one of their children (M = 5.4 years old). During home visits, the parents were shown vignettes with three writing samples of invitations to a party written by anonymous 5½-6-year-old preschoolers. The sample represented initial, intermediate, and advanced early writing levels. The parents were asked to relate to each of these vignettes and write what the child who wrote the invitation knows about writing and how they would recommend promoting the child. Additionally, the participating parents’ children’s early writing was assessed. We studied the parents’ references to the following literacy aspects: Letters, orthography (e.g., final letters, vowel letters), phonology, and the writing system (e.g., the direction of writing, the separation between words) when relating to the vignettes and when recommending ways to support the children’s writing development. The study’s analyses revealed that parents distinguished between the writing levels of these anonymous children and suggested providing writing support recommendations in line with the various levels. Parents mainly referred to the letters when describing and suggesting support for the initial writing level. They referred more to the writing system when giving their opinion and suggesting support for the writing at an advanced level. The more parents referred to different aspects of literacy when analyzing the writing vignettes, the more aspects of writing support they suggested in their writing support recommendations. Parents who related to more literacy aspects in their writing support recommendations to anonymous children had children with higher writing levels. The study indicates that parents’ general knowledge and understanding of literacy development has a role in fostering their own children’s literacy skills.
... This achievement is remarkable (Ho et al., 2003). The developmental trend of name-writing skills we observed in the 4-year-old low-income Taiwanese children supported Tolchinsky's (2003) differentiation hypothesis, namely that children learn the general properties of a writing system (e.g. linearity or lack of iconicity) before the language-specific properties (e.g. ...
The perspective of emergent literacy was applied to investigate the name-writing skills of 4-year-old, low-income Mandarin Chinese-speaking children in Taiwan. One hundred and eleven children in Taiwan were recruited from 12 public preschools. Children were individually assessed with a name-writing task, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, book and print concepts, and recognition of Chinese characters and radicals. Analyses of correlations and stepwise regressions were conducted. The results indicated the following: (1) children’s age, vocabulary ability, book and print concepts, and recognition of Chinese characters and radicals were significantly correlated with name-writing skills, whereas the total number of name strokes was not, and (2) recognition of Chinese characters and radicals made the greatest contribution (30%) to explain the variance in name-writing skills, followed by PPVT-R score (3%). A discussion and implications are provided in relation to early writing skills and instruction.
... Our previous research showed that children already have considerable understanding of writing and mathematical signs before they are taught (see also Tolchinsky, 2003), and can use their emergent understandings to represent and communicate their thinking. Sometimes referred to as notations, inscriptions or symbolic tools, graphical signs encompass all their early marks and signs including scribblemarks, drawings, their personal maps, early writing and those they use to ex press their mathematical ideas. ...
An important aspect of mathematics in primary school is the need for children to use its abstract written symbols. However, research has shown that using standard mathematical symbols is challenging for young children, the mathematics they copy or colour-in often failing to make personal sense. Yet this important aspect of mathematics education has been largely misunderstood and its significance undervalued in schools and by policy makers and curriculum writers.
... The instrument was originally designed by Dockrell and Teubal (2007) to address the question of when 4-and 5-year-old children begin to distinguish between numerical and writing notation systems. In addition, the instrument was shown to be reliable and valid with children in United Kingdom (Dockrell and Teubal 2007) and it has been internationally used with very young children (e.g., Gariboldi and Salsa 2019;Ralli and Alexandrou 2013;Tolchinsky 2003). ...
This study investigated six-year-old children’s metacognitive and self-regulatory processes during task engagement and their relations to children’s online metacognitive experiences, particularly feelings of difficulty (FOD). Sixty first graders (57% boys; M age: 6.2 yr., SD = 3 months) were individually interviewed. They were engaged in an ecological and challenging graphic task. Based on C.Ind.Le Coding Scheme, the present study took into account indicators of metacognitive knowledge (i.e., knowledge of persons, tasks and strategies), metacognitive regulation (i.e., planning, monitoring, control and evaluation) and emotional and motivational regulation (i.e., emotional and motivational monitoring and control). Moreover, children’s spontaneous comments of FOD were coded. Results showed that the communication of the FOD were significantly associated with the deployment of metacognition and self-regulation, with the exception of planning. The communication of FOD during the task allowed children to mobilize resources and to achieve their goals. Indeed, children who displayed higher evidence of metacognition and self-regulation felt that the task would be difficult but that they would be able to solve it. We discuss the importance of promoting and hearing the children’s voices and judgments about their metacognitive experiences to solve the activities in educational contexts.
... Script communities foster the application of regular reading strategies…that facilitate communication. (Houston (2004): 240) Given the opportunity to interact with written artifacts as an observable part of their world, children develop ideas about writing, even before they are schooled in it, and this knowledge "undergoes reorganisational processes with age and experience" (Tolchinsky (2003): 53). Through very basic processes of repeating, remembering and practising, we learn to write, forming kinaesthetic melodies (A. ...
A study of writing and its place in the world, which opens up lines of sight on the social processes which perpetuate its continuing formations and transformations.
keywords: writing, technology, material culture, language, ideologies
... Several studies argued that children's attempts to write begin with scribbling (Frank, 2009). Based on Tolchinsky's (2003) differentiation ...
This research aims to explore the continuity of the pre-school education program and the primary school Turkish literacy program in the context of early writing skills. These skills are identified within the scope of cognitive, socio-cultural, linguistic, and psycho-motor skills, and it is critical that there is a continuity of these education programs prepared for the children not to experience transition problems between the two educational settings and to ensure that they are complementary to each other. In this way, children will adapt to school more easily through developing their academic skills, and their learning skills will also be supported. In this study, the 2013 Preschool Education Program, which guides the early years education of 36-72-month-old children, and the 2019 Turkish Language Teaching Program were examined in terms of early writing skills. The document analysis method, which is a qualitative method, was used in the research, and the analyses were completed by using the NVivo12 program. The aims of the programs, necessary qualifications, activities, achievements, materials, types of writing, learning-teaching approach, assessment and evaluation approach, classroom organization, genre, and writing skills were examined in the extent of the study. As of the results, similar and different characteristics while supporting writing skills were found, and the aspects in which they support each other, and differences were determined. Findings showed that children’s development in both settings was approached as a whole, and it was aimed to transform the writing awareness developed in the pre-school period into the writing habit in the primary school program. It has been also revealed that both programs complement each other and support the transformation of writing skills into a behavioral system; in these programs, a student-centered and process-oriented approach, and multi-dimensional assessment tools for writing were emphasized. Therefore, integrity in terms of socio-cultural, cognitive, psychomotor, and linguistics skills was ensured. The main differences can be summarised as having a play-based approach in the preschool program and a learning-oriented approach in the Turkish Lesson Curriculum, different types of activities, preschool program being more comprehensive and richer in terms of suggested resources, the diversity of classroom arrangements, and the lack of themes in the preschool program with regards to early writing skills.
... From an early age, however, learning to write should include an understanding that text has meaning and that marks communicate a message (Dyson, 2009;Myhill, 2011). Young children are eager to discover what they can do with print and arrive at school wanting to mark the page as writers (Graves, 2013;Tolchinsky, 2003). As preschoolers develop a concept of how to write, they acquire the understanding that (1) writing is a form of communication, (2) writing involves letters and words, and (3) writing has many purposes (Otto, 2008). ...
Research supports the importance of developing early literacy skills through culturally relevant activities and school/home partnerships as essential ingredients in high quality early learning environments (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2019; Gay, 2000). Educators, however, frequently dismiss the significance of honoring a child’s first language, family, and culture when developing early literacy skills (Purcell-Gates, Melzi, Najafi, & Orellana, 2011). Integrating children’s linguistic and cultural understandings, however, is valuable and meaningful for their academic success and overall development (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore children’s narratives as a culturally relevant practice that promotes early writing. Using student data from a prekindergarten dual language classroom, we found that using family pictures from home provided multiple iterations of children’s stories and demonstrated how Latino families’ cultural experiences are significant for the development of children’s emergent writing development. Implications for practice are discussed.
... Liliana Tolchinsky has contributed very fine work in the domain of literacy development, from the early steps into the writing system to later development (Tolchinsky, 2003(Tolchinsky, , 2004. In her work, she emphasizes that literacy encompasses a wide range of competencies (Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002) that allow language users to draw, implicitly or consciously, on their own resources in a flexible way in order to produce behaviors well adapted to the communicative needs of the situation at hand. ...
... A hallmark of children's symbolic development is the ability to understand, produce and use drawings. Drawings, as external representations, have a physical permanence that allows them to be stored, retrieved and shared (Donald, 1991;Tolchinsky, 2003). This feature is critical because it enables pictures to serve a variety of purposes, such as to communicate information to other people, to express ideas or feelings and to recall information and experiences. ...
In two studies, we examined whether and how 3- and 3½-year-old children were able to use object information from their own drawings to solve a task. The children had to produce drawings of simple objects and then use the shape and/or color of their pictures to identify replicas of the referents depicted. The results showed a relationship between graphic production and use. In Study 1, when shape was the single distinctive cue across objects, only the older group was able to produce and use drawings effectively. In Study 2, 3-year-olds used their drawings effectively when not only shape, but also color, were available as cues to identify the objects portrayed. Although most 3-year-olds’ drawings did not reflect the shape of the referents, by incorporating color young children demonstrated to recognize the intention behind their own representations and used them to solve the task. Our findings are discussed in line with intentionality and Theory of Mind.
... At the same time, a growing body of studies indicate that symbol-related skills are associated with both word reading and calculation. Writing and Arabic number systems share both structural and functional similarities (Landsmann & Karmiloff-Smith, 1992;Tolchinsky, 2003). Calculation and word reading depend on a stable understanding of how these two notational systems work, that is, their symbolic representation (Bialystok, 2000;Bialystok & Martin, 2003;X. ...
Drawing on Geary’s (1995) evolution-based model of cognitive and academic development, this study investigated the relation between biologically primary skills (vocabulary, executive functions, and visual-spatial processing) and subsequent word reading and calculation. It also examined the extent to which these relations were mediated by biologically secondary skills (metalinguistic awareness and symbolic numerical processing). A total of 197 Chinese children (age at the first measurement point: M ± SD = 53.38 ± 3.32 months) were assessed three times over 18 months on their vocabulary, spatial perception, working memory (WM), short-term memory (STM), inhibitory control, metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic awareness), symbolic numerical skills (i.e., counting, number comparison, and number transcoding), Chinese word reading, and calculation competencies. The results showed that STM and spatial perception predicted subsequent calculation after baseline performance and background information were controlled for, and the contributions were fully mediated by counting and number transcoding. Inhibitory control had a direct effect on later calculation, which was not mediated by any secondary skills. With regards to word reading, although none of the biologically primary skills predicted later word reading after controlling for baseline performance and background information, vocabulary; spatial perception; STM, inhibitory control; and WM had indirect effects on word reading via phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and number transcoding. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
... It might, for example, be worthwhile to investigate whether children who have a greater tendency to spontaneously focus their attention on Arabic number symbols also have a greater tendency to spontaneously focus on letters in their everyday surroundings. This possibility is theoretically likely, because letters and numerals share similar perceptual characteristics, which are explored by children from an early age on (Neumann et al., 2013;Tolchinsky, 2003). Moreover, children's numeral and letter identification knowledge have been shown to be moderately to strongly correlated across development (Aarnoutse, Van Leeuwe, & Verhoeven, 2005;Purpura & Napoli, 2015). ...
Children’s spontaneous focusing on Arabic number symbols (SFONS) has been identified as a relevant component of their early mathematical development. This study investigated whether SFONS is a separate construct from spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and examined whether it is uniquely related to numerical abilities and mathematics achievement. Participants were 159 kindergartners (4-5-year-olds) who completed measures of SFONS, SFON, numerical abilities, mathematics achievement, spatial ability, and language ability. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a two-factor model representing a separate SFONS and SFON factor best fitted the data, indicating that SFONS is separate from SFON. Correlation and regression analyses showed that SFONS was associated with numerical abilities and mathematics achievement. These associations – except for verbal counting – remained after controlling for age, parental education, spatial ability, language ability, and SFON. These findings suggest that SFONS is a unique component of early mathematical development that deserves attention in early mathematics education.
... The fact that there is a lot of mathematical life "before school" or "before being taught" has been pointed out by authors such as Martin Hughes (1986), Margaret Donaldson (1978) and Liliana Tolchinsky (2003). Usage-based theory of toddlers´ language acquisition (Tomasello, 2003) offers a description of the key situations leading to the first holophrases in a joint adult-child attentional frame. ...
How can we design mathematical instructional activities that reveal children's early mathematical
competence in an analogous way as school activities that exploit children's mother language
competence? We put forward a list of mathematical conceptions young children may have been
taught previously and some subsequent actions developed to observe them and guide their first
steps in mathematics in an instructional context. The list has been developed on the basis of insights
from modern axiomatic presentation of arithmetic and geometry contrasted with historical results
and epistemology of mathematics. We discuss the application of the list in a singular context, a
group of eight 3 to 8 year-old Spanish children with Trisomy 21, to show the suitability of this tool
for revealing early mathematical competence.
A fundamental question in early childhood mathematics concerns the relationship between young children’s own informal signs and the formal abstract symbolic language of mathematics. This research draws on recent studies investigating the genesis of mathematical semiosis from a Vygotskian cultural-historical and social-semiotic perspective.
Longitudinal ethnographic data were gathered from case studies of seven children of three to four years of age in an inner-city nursery school in England. The data is interrogated through interpretive analysis to consider the role of intertextuality in mathematisation. Secondly, this study investigates the mathematisation of the children’s early inscriptions over time, illuminating the “natural history of signs”. Finally, it considers likely processes of mathematisation supporting children’s increasing use of formal abstract signs and strategies of mathematics.
Analysis of intertextuality showed that some graphical signs moved between individuals’ texts, also borrowed from and woven together by others, including those modelled by the teacher. Coding the children’s inscriptions as early mathematical marks, iconic or symbolic indicated their development towards the formal signs of mathematics. Children’s progressive understandings of mathematical sign-use appear to be attained through recursive, bi-directional movement, allowing “ratcheting” to more advanced knowledge over time and permitting the gap in children’s understandings to be bridged.
The importance of writing in contemporary society has continued to be emphasised and has also received attention in policy documents. Thus, this study sought to examine the nature of parent and/or literate helper mediation of Zambian second graders’ word writing and its associations with the student’s independent Bemba literacy ability. Children’s independent literacy skills were assessed in their schools. During home visits, 57 children and their parents or literate helpers were videotaped while writing word items in Bemba. The nature of interactions underwent analysis for literate mediation and general (socioemotional) mediation measures (atmosphere, feedback and mutuality). Documentation of literate mediation was at the letter level, while general (socioemotional) mediation was coded at the word level. Results revealed variations in the writing mediation strategies parents and/or literate helpers employed to facilitate children’s writing. With children’s ages, non-verbal reasoning, and parent’s education statistically controlled in a regression equation, the typical literate mediation uniquely explained 15% variance in children’s word writing. Separate hierarchical regression equations involving the general (socioemotional) mediation showed that the process category, tapping specific writing mediation uniquely explained 21% of the variance in word writing while the mutuality category explained up to 8% in word writing variance. Findings demonstrate the importance of parent and literate helper writing support for augmenting children’s literacy skills in an orthography and region not commonly investigated (i.e., Bemba in sub-Saharan Africa).KeywordsBembaShared joint writingInvented spellingEarly literacyScaffolding
Children’s conceptual knowledge of writing words and numbers is an important aspect of their cognitive development. Children use notations as representations that have a communicative value and begin to learn about formal differences between writing words and writing numbers at an early age before the onset of
formal schooling. The aim of the present study was to examine preschool children’s conceptual knowledge
of writing words and numbers in an ecologically valid task with communicative value. One hundred and twenty Greek-speaking preschool children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old were assessed on the identity card task, which examined their production of notations for words and numbers during their effort to communicate personal information to others. The results demonstrated a developmental trend in the type of notation children produced with the younger children providing more “ambiguous” notations, for both tasks implying writing words and numbers, while as they got older, they provided more “writing-like”
notations for the tasks implying writing words and more “number-like” notations for the tasks implying writing numbers. Understanding when and how children differentiate their symbolic representations for words and numbers can inform both theory and practice by expanding our understanding of whether
certain constraints characterize the developmental course of a specific notational system. The findings of the present study could be incorporated in educational practice and enhance children’s emerging literacy and numeracy skills.
Emergent bilingual children express their ideas in written language through meaningful marks on a page by leveraging their oral language and print focused skills from home and school languages. Because writing is a complex task, particularly for children learning more than one language, teachers must make decisions about how they guide children through the writing process and how they respond in the moment to children’s writing ideas or actions. This article addresses the early writing environments and instructional practices needed to meet the needs of emergent bilingual writers. We examine how universal and language specific oral to written connections can be utilized in every day classroom interactions to support emergent bilingual children’s meaning and print based writing skills. Detailed examples of modeling and scaffolding practices that support preschool children’s writing development are described. Early writing, emergent bilinguals, early literacy, teacher practice, dual language learners, modeling, scaffolding.
Geletterdheid is één van de belangrijkste culturele middelen in de meeste hedendaagse samenlevingen. Leren lezen en schrijven staat daarom centraal in het curriculum van het basisonderwijs. Voor het formele leren van geletterdheid tonen jonge kinderen al hun oriëntatie op het bestaan, de kenmerken, het gebruik en het nut van geschreven taal. Deze informele kennis over geletterdheid, ontluikende geletterdheid (Sulzby e.a. 1989) genoemd, vormt een belangrijke basis voor latere formele lees- en schrijfinstructie en geletterdheidsontwikkeling (Mol & Bus, 2011; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). De laatste jaren wordt steeds meer nadruk gelegd op het belang van de geletterdheidsomgeving van kinderen, aangeduid als de sociaal-culturele context, voor de ontwikkeling van (ontluikende) geletterdheid (Teale et al., 2020). Die context betreft vooral hoe er thuis (en op school) over geschreven taal gepraat wordt en welke rol (meertalige) teksten daar spelen. We staan in dit hoofdstuk stil bij de variatie tussen kinderen wat betreft hun ontluikende geletterdheid in relatie tot verschillende sociaal-culturele omgevingen.
The chapter begins with a review of foundational studies on how monolingual children develop emergent literacy, then moves to explore how children develop multiliteracy by learning to interpret symbols and icons in their immediate contexts. The research shows that children find ways to experience and construct meaning from their local scripts in each of their multiple languages. Studies presented in this chapter show that children can interpret symbols in several different scripts, and that they find strategies to navigate multiple languages and become competent speakers in their communities.
Childhood multilingualism has become a norm rather than an exception. This is the first handbook to survey state-of-the-art research on the uniqueness of early multilingual development in children growing up with more than two languages in contact. It provides in-depth accounts of the complexity and dynamics of early multilingualism by internationally renowned scholars who have researched typologically different languages in different continents. Chapters are divided into six thematic areas, following the trajectory, environment and conditions underlying the incipient and early stages of multilingual children's language development. The many facets of childhood multilingualism are approached from a range of perspectives, showcasing not only the challenges of multilingual education and child-rearing but also the richness in linguistic and cognitive development of these children from infancy to early schooling. It is essential reading for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of the multiple aspects of multilingualism, seen through the unique prism of children.
Grapholinguistics, the multifaceted study of writing systems, is growing increasingly popular, yet to date no coherent account covering and connecting its major branches exists. This book now gives an overview of the core theoretical and empirical questions of this field. A treatment of the structure of writing systems—their relation to speech and language, their material features, linguistic functions, and norms, as well as the different types in which they come—is complemented by perspectives centring on the use of writing, incorporating psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic issues such as reading processes or orthographic variation as social action. Examples stem from a variety of diverse systems such as Chinese, English, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, German, and Korean, which allows defining concepts in a broadly applicable way and thereby constructing a comparative grapholinguistic framework that provides readers with important tools for studying any writing system. The book emphasizes that grapholinguistics is a discipline in its own right, inviting discussion and further research in this up-and-coming field as well as an overdue integration of writing into general linguistic discussion.
Writing is an increasingly important component of classroom instruction and an essential tool for learning, including language learning, yet little is known about the English writing development of emergent bilingual students with and without disabilities. Research in this area has previously focused on spelling and the role of cross-linguistic transfer. While knowledge in these areas is useful to the field, research that examines higher level writing skills and identifies evidence-based practices is still needed. This chapter uses an additive approach to examine the role of cross-linguistic transfer in the writing development of emergent bilingual students with and without disabilities to provide teachers with needed guidance.
Before formal instruction, preschoolers represent words in print in various degrees of conventionality. Unlicensed letters are letters that have no connection to the word that the child is aiming to write; they are neither licensed by phoneme-grapheme rules nor by orthographical representations in the mental lexicon. In the current paper, we explore the characteristics of unlicensed letters in the written products of Hebrew-speaking children. Specifically, we examined the role of statistical learning in predicting specific categories of unlicensed letters in preschoolers’ spelling, focusing on letters that are present/absent in the child’s first name, letters that are more/less frequent in the Hebrew scripts, letters that can spell vowels/consonant, letters that are visually similar/dissimilar, and letters that are easy/difficult to produce graphically. We also evaluated the role of the children’s writing level and individual indices (age, gender, socioeconomic status, length of the first name) in predicting the use of these categories. The writing outputs (N=733 words), written by 152 preschoolers (M=63.9 months, SD=6.90), were analyzed and yielded 2109 unlicensed letters. Results indicated that the unlicensed letters in children’s early spellings contained significantly more letters with high frequency in Hebrew texts, consonant letters, letters that are visually similar to other letters, and letters that are easy to produce graphically. The child’s writing level, age, gender, and length of the first name, uniquely explained the use of each of the categories of unlicensed letters. Parents and teachers should learn about children's writing and spelling development to support their writing appropriately.
The promotion of literacy skills is considered a cornerstone in the work of special education teachers (SETs) and speech‐language pathologists (SLPs). The present study examined the self‐reported literacy knowledge of Israeli 67 SETs and 72 SLPs along three dimensions: development, assessment and intervention, and emergent literacy. Participants in both groups completed an individually delivered Likert‐based survey. The main findings indicated positive correlations between development, assessment, and emergent literacy in both groups and no differences in their knowledge about emergent literacy. In contrast, SLPs reported lack of knowledge in literacy development, assessment and intervention, compared to SETs. The relationship between language modalities ‐ reading, writing, oral language – seems to determine the role of each profession in literacy. Furthermore, the perception of written language as a modality or as a style of discourse was not conclusive in both groups. Therefore, policy makers and training programs should continue to deepen the training of professional staffs, especially by encouraging and training SLPs to address written language. Furthermore, the demarcation of the field of linguistic literacy of each profession is not evident in practice and needs to be discussed and coordinated to achieve true and optimal inter‐professional cooperation.
Bevor wir uns den Forschungsarbeiten zur Entwicklung der Intelligenz zuwenden, geht es zunächst darum zu klären, was Intelligenz ist. In den meisten Bereichen der kognitiven Entwicklung wie Wahrnehmung, Sprache und Begriffsverstehen werden altersbezogene Veränderungen geprüft. Aber die Intelligenzforschung interessiert sich auch für individuelle Unterschiede zwischen Kindern gleichen Alters. Fragen zur Intelligenzentwicklung werden aus gutem Grund kontrovers diskutiert, da sie sehr grundlegende Aspekte betreffen: die Rolle von Vererbung und Umwelt, den Einfluss ethnischer Unterschiede, die Effekte von Reichtum und Armut und die Möglichkeit zu Fortschritten. Daneben werden neuere Intelligenztheorien vorgestellt, die einen größeren Bereich menschlicher Fähigkeiten umfassen. Zu den wichtigsten Intelligenzleistungen von Kindern gehört der Erwerb schulischer Fähigkeiten wie Lesen, Schreiben und Mathematik.
SCOLINTER: A Trilingual Corpus. The Example of Word Segmentation
This article presents a longitudinal, trilingual (French, Spanish and Italian) school writing corpus. Its aim is to compare the evolution of literacy skills between these three languages in primary school. Actually, only CP (grade 1) has been entirely treated but the same pupils will be followed up to CM2 (grade 5). The exploitation of this corpus proposes a tool-based approach based on comparisons between the version of the texts produced by the pupils and a so-called ‹standardised› version. This approach makes it possible to produce a linguistic description of the achievements and problems that pupils face in their texts. In particular, this article focus on segmentation between words, highlighting both the frequency of the phenomenon and the categories of words in which it occurs. The comparative analysis reveals the presence of similar characteristics in the trilingual corpus.
Die mittlere Kindheit beginnt mit Eintritt in das Bildungssystem ab dem Alter von etwa vier Jahren und endet mit Beginn der Pubertät mit durchschnittlich zwölf Jahren. Im Vergleich zu den eindrücklichen Veränderungen der frühen Kindheit und Adoleszenz scheint diese dazwischenliegende Entwicklungsphase des Kindes wenig aufregend zu sein. In Wirklichkeit ist sie aber alles andere als statisch: Sie gilt vielmehr als bedeutsamer Übergang, der von markanten Veränderungsprozessen geprägt ist – besonders in den kognitiven und sozialen Fähigkeiten. Diese werden in diesem Kapitel detailliert beschrieben. Auch thematisiert dieses Kapitel die Entwicklung der motorischen und schulischen Fertigkeiten wie das Schreiben, Lesen und Rechnen und stellt schließlich das Fit-Konzept mit einer Reihe von praktischen Fallbeispielen vor.
Early writing is a foundational component of emergent literacy. Despite recent increases in early writing research, studies often narrowly focus on transcription (i.e., letter and/or name writing, spelling) to the exclusion of their ability to compose or generate ideas and translate into writing. Research investigating composing approaches it in disparate ways without clear conceptual, empirical, or theoretical foundations. Research Findings: The current study sought to better understand early composing. A sample of 133 pre-kindergarten children completed four composing tasks and which were scored in multiple ways to understand relations between multi-perspective scoring systems and determine if children performed differentially based on task. Findings demonstrated that children’s performance, across task context and scoring conceptualization, was variable but mostly highly correlated. Further analyses indicated the overreliance of composing scoring methods on understanding children’s composing through a transcription lens, with expressed focus upon children’s abilities to transcribe within a composing task context. Results indicated that children performed differentially on tasks; however, this variability was dependent upon scoring method. Practice or Policy: Findings have implications for early childhood teachers given curricular and standards-based emphases on composing, despite the field lacking a strong understanding of the development and nature of composing in young children.
Children’s spontaneous focusing on Arabic number symbols (SFONS) has been identified as a relevant component of their early mathematical development. This study investigated whether SFONS is a separate construct from spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and examined whether it is uniquely related to numerical abilities and mathematics achievement. Participants were 159 kindergartners (4-5-year-olds) who completed measures of SFONS, SFON, numerical abilities, mathematics achievement, spatial ability, and language ability. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a two-factor model representing a separate SFONS and SFON factor best fitted the data, indicating that SFONS is separate from SFON. Correlation and regression analyses showed that SFONS was associated with numerical abilities and mathematics achievement. These associations – except for verbal counting – remained after controlling for age, parental education, spatial ability, language ability, and SFON. These findings suggest that SFONS is a unique component of early mathematical development that deserves attention in early mathematics education.
Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. Linguistically, writing is a system of graphic marks that relate to language. Under the lens of processing, it is a method of producing and perceiving utterances with our hands, eyes, and brains. And from a communication theoretical and sociolinguistic perspective, it is an utterly personal medium that allows users not only to convey messages to others but also to associate themselves with cultures or ideologies. These perspectives must merge to become the foundation of a functional theory of grapholinguistics that aims not only to describe how writing systems are built but to explain why they are built that way. Starting with a unified framework that allows the description of all types of writing systems with comparative concepts (such as grapheme) and moving towards the incorporation of evidence from disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to arrive at explanations, this book establishes the cornerstones of such a functional theory of writing. The Nature of Writing is a collection of ideas about writing, a status report about relevant research, a discovery of desiderata, and a new perspective. It is a start, but most importantly, it is an invitation.
Coding as a Playground, Second Edition focuses on how young children (aged 7 and under) can engage in computational thinking and be taught to become computer programmers, a process that can increase both their cognitive and social-emotional skills. Learn how coding can engage children as producers-and not merely consumers-of technology in a playful way. You will come away from this groundbreaking work with an understanding of how coding promotes developmentally appropriate experiences such as problem-solving, imagination, cognitive challenges, social interactions, motor skills development, emotional exploration, and making different choices. Featuring all-new case studies, vignettes, and projects, as well as an expanded focus on teaching coding as a new literacy, this second edition helps you learn how to integrate coding into different curricular areas to promote literacy, math, science, engineering, and the arts through a project-based approach and a positive attitude to learning.
In this paper, we describe patterns in and associations between the ways in which young (ages 3–7) children living in northern rural and Indigenous communities in two Canadian provinces communicated ideas as they drew, talked, and wrote in response to researcher prompts. Prompting the children to draw and talk about a personal experience afforded them the opportunity to explore word meanings and relationships using their personal sign systems prior to communicating the experience using a new sign system, writing. We conclude with recommendations for teachers of ways to scaffold students’ transition between the two sign systems in their classroom.
Three decades of inquiry have explored the nature of the relationship between writing and reading, yielding at least three theoretical models (interactive, socio-cognitive, and separate processing), numerous perspectives within each model, and a wide range of research methodologies to support or refute these theories. Texts in general and written texts in particular, must have content (i.e., the information depicted in the text) and structure (i.e., the way this information is organized), both constructs are interrelated and essential in the construction of a good expository text. For example, reading research has shown that awareness of text structure contributes to reading fluency, and assists the construction of a coherent mental representation of the text structure improving (Williams JP, Journal of Special Education 39:6–18, 2005) or hampering (Williams, Literacy in the curriculum: integrating text structure and content area instruction. In: McNamara DS (ed) Reading comprehension strategies theories, interventions, and technologies. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hoboken, pp 199–220, 2007) comprehension. Drawing on different aspects of each of these theories, this study explores the relations between reading and writing abilities in elementary school children, in middle class integrative schools in central Israel. Our assumption that a high-quality written text contains the various structural components in accordance with the genre requirements was corroborated. We conclude that the indicators that relate to text-structure-quality of different text genres is dynamic and its development is age-dependent.
Studies conducted over the past 40 years on emergent literacy have shown that children well before starting formal instruction develop ideas, beliefs and conceptualizations that direct the functioning of writing and other systems of graphic representations like drawings. Researchers have argued that early distinction among representational systems are based on domain specific constraints operating within every knowledge domain. According to this precocious distinction between different notational systems, children perform different actions in case they are asked to write or draw. However, drawing and writing are closely developmentally intertwined, as both perform communicative functions, require cognitive and psychomotor skills and the use of graphic implements. In this sense, overcoming a perspective, even a pedagogical one, that favors writing rather than drawing in the first years of schooling allows to expand the notion of literacy, to remind the importance of building new knowledges (conventionalities in print) starting from the known (mastery of graphical units), and finally to widen text construction combining visual and linguistic literacy.
This paper reports the findings of in-depth qualitative research to investigate two-year-old and three-year-old children’s writing. It focuses on nine families whose children attended the same early years pre-school setting. The research developed a clear understanding of what children of this age understand about the functions and purpose of writing; and joint understanding amongst parents and early years practitioners of how the children’s emergent writing might be supported both in their home and early years setting. Data sets included a series of classroom observations, examples of children’s writing, and interview transcripts with children’s parents and early years practitioners. Findings showed that most adults did not perceive that the children could write, a perception that was rooted in the conceptualisation of writing as necessarily formed of conventional text, and a skill to be developed and taught at a later age. In direct contrast to this, the participant children were engaging in their own discourse of writing to record and share meaningful text. It is argued that if young children perceive themselves to be writing, a responsive writing pedagogy can only be effective if the development ofwriting in the early years is reframed.
Studied emergent literacy in Hebrew by analyzing the attempts of 34 nursery children (aged 4 yrs 8 mo to 6 yrs 4 mo) and 32 kindergartners (aged 5 yrs 8 mo to 6 yrs 8 mo) to write and read pairs of nouns. The noun pairs were selected to represent differences along the linguistic dimensions of phonology, semantic content, and morphological complexity. Ss of both age groups exhibited sensitivity to all 3 linguistic dimensions by writing longer those words that sounded longer, denoted more objects, and were composed of more morphemes. With age, Ss' sensitivity to phonology increased and sensitivity to semantics decreased, and both these sensitivities played a greater role in literacy acquisition than did sensitivity to morphology. Consideration of multiple cue systems was both widespread and prolonged developmentally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article is a follow-up to an earlier article (Bednarz and Janvier, 1982) which presented the results of a research study on the understanding of numeration by primary school children. That study pointed out the main difficulties children meet in learning numeration, presented a theoretical framework that made explicit a conception of numeration different from the one considered in current mathematics teaching, and also proposed a reference framework utilizable for learning and evaluating this notion. The experimentation in a classroom announced at the end of the article, was undertaken from 1980 to 1983 with the same group of children from the time they were in first grade (6–7 years old) to the third grade (8–9 years). The theoretical and reference frameworks developed in the former research study proved to be effective for developing a constructivist approach leading children to build a meaningful and efficient symbolism of number.
This article is mainly devoted to presenting the results of this three year longitudinal study (part C). At first, we shall characterize briefly our intervention based on a constructivist approach of numeration (part A). Also we shall describe the conditions under which the experimentation was carried out, and the means used to evaluate the impact on the pupils (part B).
In this paper principles and concepts governing systems of signs, generally, and visual communication, specifically, are discussed first. Then the definition and view of the structure and typology of writing given in A study of writing and subsequent studies is dealt with. Finally my new view of writing is presented.
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This article presents and discusses data on nominative and object clitics used by twelve monolingual French-speaking children aged 2;0 to 2;7 years in a spontaneous interaction setting and in an elicited production task. It is shown that nominative clitics surpass object clitics, and that reflexive clitics fare better than accusative clitics. It is argued that these two dissociations are compatible with the computational complexity hypothesis put forth by Jakubowicz and Nash (to appear), applied to the analysis of third person Romance pronominal clitics proposed by Jakubowicz, Nash, Rigaut, and Gérard (1998).
The punctuation (accent) system of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible contains a complete unlabeled binary phrase-structure analysis of every verse, based on a single parsing principle. The systems of punctuation, phrase structure, and parsing are each presented here in detail and contrasted with their counterparts in modern linguistics. The entire system is considered as the product of linguistic analysis, rather than as a linguistic system per se; and implications are drawn for the study of written language and writing systems.
Recent research has shown that place value remains difficult in third and fourth grade, in spite of the fact that it is taught repeatedly in every primary grade. This study was conducted to understand the cognitive processes underlying this difficulty. A counting task was devised, based on Piaget's theory of number, to find out if children in grades 1–5 are constructing a system of tens on a system of ones. Only some children in grades 2–5 evidenced this construction. The implications of the findings for place value instruction are discussed, with observations from second grade classrooms in which children are encouraged to invent their own ways of doing double-column addition.
Poor spellers from the Netherlands segmented and spelled the same words on different occasions. If they base their spellings on the segmentations that they produce in the segmentation task, the correlation between segmentation and spelling scores should be high, and segmentation should not be more difficult than spelling. The predicted correlation was found, but spelling proved to be easier than segmentation, particularly for postvocalic consonant-clusters. Correct spellings despite incorrect segmentation were also more frequent than would be expected on the basis of unreliability of segmentation. Ways in which writing may facilitate and improve segmentation are therefore discussed. These findings raise doubts about the validity of segmentation test and about the efficiency of teaching children to segment without using letters.
This paper reports a single case study of a severely retarded Italian boy. TA has a full-scale I.Q. of 47, a digit span of 2 items, and gross deficits in many praxic tasks. His spoken language is phonologically and syntactically well formed, although in terms of semantic and thematic structure it is highly impaired. There is comparable disorder of verbal comprehension. Despite this background of cognitive failure, TA has acquired excellent reading and writing skills at the level of print-to-sound and sound-to-print transcoding. We discuss the implications of the data for the modularity hypothesis, the vexed issue of cognitive prerequisites for reading, and the role of “metalinguistic awareness” as a determinant of “reading readiness”.
This article concerns the production of schwa-like elements (Monosyllabic Place Holders, MPHs) before lexical items in early utterances of Italian children. These elements perform the function of protomorphemes, a role testified to by several facts, including the complementary distribution between them and free grammatical morphemes over time. These findings consistently support the idea that functional categories emerge very early and that virtually no “prefunctional” stage needs to be hypothesized for early combinatorial speech. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to show that MPHs do not stem from imitation but actually retain important grammatical properties of functional free morphemes, and (b) to show that in the development of free morphology certain syntactic (positional) properties, via the MPH strategy, emerge before full assessment of morphophonological paradigms take place. This implies that learning morphology cannot be conceived of solely as proceeding through a series of inferences about the distributional properties of the single morphological items.
This paper presents data on the knowledge and beliefs about reading and number seen in a sample of children followed through their last year of nursery school. The data showed that children of this age have beliefs and goals concerning reading and number which are very different to those of adults but that their emergent literacy interacts with their emergent numeracy in important ways. The children had very dissimilar frameworks of belief for number and reading respectively and prior to school, changes occurred in their strategic use of numerals and of counting. It is argued that the preschool has an important role to play in making children aware of the adult meanings of reading and number without imposing these meanings in overly directed activity.
Experiences relevant to emergent literacy and numeracy in 2-year- old and 3-year old children were examined in 10 public nurseries. The research was guided by three aims, ie. to describe the frequency and variety of such experiences and investigate the contexts in which they occur; to gauge the quality of the experiences in terms oj the type of adult-child interaction in which they are embedded: and to examine variation between nurseries with regard to the frequency of relevant experience. Observations showed numeracy experiences to be infrequent relative to literacy experiences; both were highly context- dependent and related to adult input. Variation between the nurseries on a number of measures was examined and showea consistent patterns between variables relating to staff background and nursery organisation on the one hand and the frequency of literacy and numeracy experience provided for children on the other. In those nurseries with smaller groups, more effectively implemented staff-child assignment systems and younger staff, the children were more frequently observed involved in some kind of literacy or numeracy experience, and more often seen having positive and less often negative interaction with adults around these experiences. The importance of the interactive basis of early learning is stressed by these findings.
Preschool children's understandings and use of numerals are investigated in a series of tasks constructed to draw upon common experiences at home. Most 3and 4‐year‐olds explained the purpose of numerals on telephones and birthday cards. However fewer noticed when these were missing from pictures of these or other familiar objects. Children rarely said number words in giving fast‐food orders. They used several methods to represent number on notes for the milkman, party invitations and labels. Many children showed knowledge of the language used in specifying dates, times, addresses or telephone numbers. Across a range of tasks, understanding preceded use of numerals.
Thirty children in Geneva, Switzerland, 15 middle-class children in Bariloche and 15 lower-class children from a semi-literate or illiterate milieu in Bariloche, Argentina, were tested. All children were aged 6 and attending public schools. Tasks were: (1) judging which of two bi- or tri-digit written numerals was the biggest, and explaining why; and (2) explaining the role played by the different digits in numerals such as 11, 12, 16, 17. Results show that children at these ages use various strategies in task 1: they compare number of digits; read aloud the numerals and refer to number-string knowledge; treat bi- and tri-digits as the sum of their face value parts; and lastly, quite often take both face value and position of digits into account in a correct way. They, however, were not able to explain place-value. Most subjects gave face value interpretations, while a few children account for the whole collection of chips and make part of the chips correspond to one digit, and the other part to the other digit. Differences in performance between the three types of children emerge.
Young children's awareness of the word as a unit of spoken language was investigated in a series of five experiments that required children aged from 4 to 7 years to segment spoken language strings into words. The results of the first three experiments suggest that young children have considerable success in segmenting spoken language materials, regardless of the grammaticality of the strings, and regardless of the grammatical form class, plurality, or syllabic length of the component words. The basis of such successful segmentation ability was considered further in a fourth experiment, which indicated that children may use stress as a basis of response. A fifth experiment therefore manipulated syllabic stress and morphemic structure to determine what response strategies are employed by children of different ages in segmenting speech. The results suggest that 4- to 5-year-old children respond primarily on the basis of acoustic factors such as stress, whereas somewhat older 5- to 6-year-old children respond on the basis of (unbound) morphemic structure. By age 7, most children have abandoned strategies and now respond on the basis of word concept. Implications of these findings for reading acquisition are briefly indicated.
This article approaches the linguistic innateness issue from the perspective of a nonhuman species, the bonobo, an ape which is generally taken to be the best living model for early hominids. Recent studies indicate that a bonobo reared with humans comes spontaneously to comprehend spoken words, to produce novel two word combinations, and to respond appropriately to syntactically ordered sentences.
The differences between the use of word combinations to say what one word can accomplish and combinations that convey a novel idea not transmittable by a single word is emphasized. It is argued that the use of such novel combinations must have preceded the appearance of syntax in the evolution of language. The use of multiword novel combinations has not received sufficient attention in the literature because of the erroneous assumption that novel meanings could only be achieved through syntactical structure. Consequently the significance of the ape's linguistic competence has been severely undervalued.
When asked to write an utterance, nursery children and kindergartners often produce strings of unrelated characters. We analysed whether these invented writings reflect similarities and differences in the phonetic and semantic aspects of the utterance. One hundred and twenty Israeli children were asked to write pairs of nouns that share a syllable (e.g. pe ‘mouth’ and perach ‘flower’) and series of sentences that share either mainly nouns or mainly verbs. The older the children, the more their invented writing reflected common linguistic elements and length of utterance. Similarities and differences on the word level were represented at a younger age than those on the syllabic level. Nouns were represented in children's written productions earlier than verbs and adverbs. Invented writing was interpreted as a linguistic act, drawing on the semantic, syntactic and phonological levels of language.
This study demonstrates that children tend to distort class inclusion relations (e.g., the relation of oaks to trees) into the part-whole structure of collections (e.g., the relations of oaks to a forest). Children aged 6 to 17 were taught novel class inclusion hierarchies, analogous to the relation between oaks, pines, and trees. In one condition, the class inclusion relations were taught by ostensive definition alone, e.g., stating "These are trees" while pointing to trees and, "These are oaks" while pointing to oaks. in the second condition, children were additionally told what would be analogous to "Oaks and pines are two kinds of trees". With this additional information to constrain their interpretation, even the youngest children correctly interpreted the relation as class inclusion. In contrast, with limited information, children as old as 14 erroneously imposed a collection structure on the inclusion hierarchies. They would deny, for example, that any single tree was a tree (as they should of they thought "tree" meant "forest"), and would pick up several trees despite being asked for a tree. The results indicated that the part-whole structure of collections is simpler to establish and maintain than the structure of inclusion.