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Child Language acquisition: literacy, Spelling, Creativity vs accuracy,…
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Spelling
Categories of spelling errors
- Substitution- swapping one letter for another
- Insertion- adding extra letters
- Omission- leaving out letters
- Transposition- reversing letter orders
- Phonetic spelling- spelling words how they sound
- Salient sounds- writing only the key sounds
- Over generalisation of spelling rules- applying rules incorrectly
Read
Children's spellings are more creative because they notice distinctions adults are no longer aware of
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Treiman
Children often use capital letters letters wrong because it is drilled into them that their names need a capital
Reyner
Believes children should be taught to write from sounding out the words and writing what they hear. However this does not work for words that aren't spelt phonetically
Curtis
Believes that children should be taught to write whole words as this is more fluent and adult. He says this aids comprehension over pronunciation
Five spelling stages - Richard Gentry (1978)
- Pre-phonemic- imitating writing, mainly scribbling and using pretend letters. Some letters can be seen
- Semi-phonemic- link letter shapes and sounds and using this to write words
- Phonetic- understanding that all sounds can be represented by words and words become more complex
- Transnational- combine phonetic knowledge with visual memory, an awareness of letter combination rules
- Conventional- most words that the child uses are spelt correctly
Barclay's 7 spelling stages (1996)
- Stage 1 - Scribbling
-random marks that aren't words
-little to no pen control
-child talks through what they are doing as they do it
- Stage 2 - Mock handwriting
-shapes now forming
-no words just random letters
spacing is irregular
- Stage 3 - Mock letters
-letters are now formed
-no words just random letters
-spacing is irregular
- Stage 4 - Conventional letters
-sounds now linked to letters
-spacing still isn't there
-words sometimes reduced to the first place consonant
- Stage 5 - Invented spelling
-phonetic spelling dominates
-simple/familiar words are often spelt correctly
- Stage 6 - Appropriate spelling
-complexity arises in sentences
-standard spellings are now apparent
-writing is quite legible
- Stage 7 - Correct spelling
-spelling is now more accurate than not
-cursive is now common
Creativity vs accuracy
Alan Maley
Creative writing promotes a playful engagement with language which allows children to test out the bounds of writing in a supportive environment. He believes that creative writing develops children lexically, grammatically, and phonologically.
Craick and Lockhart
Believe that creative writing requires semantic processing which indicates an act of deep processing, whereas accurate writing is more about structural and phonemic processing which is indicative of shallow processing.
Dornyei believes that creative writing can:
-offer respite from classroom monotomy
-motivate students
-allows students to experience success
-make tasks more enjoyable
-increase autonomy
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Goouch and Lambirth
Believe that there is a negative impact on a child's self-esteem if they are told their work is wrong
Heckman
Believes that we live in an audit culture in which measuring accuracy is more important that creativity. He believes this has been created by pressure placed on schools by the government.
Being creative allows for a child to be unique and show individuality; it allows them to reflect on their own experiences and feelings. There is no such thing as being wrong in creative writing and creativity cannot be measured
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Unlike creativity, accuracy can be measured and specific advice/ feedback can be given to aid development. Accuracy marks out superior members of groups which enables them to maximise their success.
Teachers/ schools
The National Curriculum is a prescriptivist set of measures which is designed to judge children on their ability to write in certain ways. It measures a child's accuracy as a way of judging their writing ability.
Rickford
Argues there is a necessity of having rules, and creative writing should be done with rules in place. He also thinks that children should be taught to write in dialectal, colloquial, and accent forms.
He suggests that the end goal is to get children writing in standard English.
Torrance
Believes that teachers can enhance a student's creativity through judging their level of accuracy and that correcting them leads to better writing.
Britton
Proposed 3 modes of writing used by school children:
- Expressive - the first to develop because it resembles speech. It uses 1st person perspective and the content is usually based on personal preferences.
- Poetic - develops gradually, creative, phonological features and descriptive devices are common
- Transactional - develops last, around secondary school age, and is more impersonal. Formal sentence structures and graphological features are used
Langer & Abbleby - Instructional scaffolding
1- Simplify the situation
2- Clarify the situation
3- Help the student complete tasks that otherwise would be too difficult
4- Provide the framework and rules of procedure that the student will gradually learn
Vygotsky
Teachers and parents act as more knowledgeable teachers offering scaffolding to help children learn.
The Zone of Proximal development explains how a child needs support until they reach a certain stage, then they can do it independently. It focuses on the individual child's needs than what is expected of them based on their age
Marion Blank - teacher responses
An important part of a teacher's job is to guide the child towards tasks they can do to some extent.
She says that errors are necessary, it's how the teacher deals with them that is the most important.
She also says that those who have been given prizes for something tend to say they like it less than those who do not.
Donaldson - rewards and control
External rewards decrease enjoyment because we engage most in activities which we have chosen freely.
This then creates a dilemma for teachers because children cannot just be left alone.
General theories
Kroll and Perrera's stages
- Stage 1 - Preparation phase
-up to 6 years
-writing is normally copied
-basic motor skills
-basic spellings
- Stage 2 - Consolidation stage
-6-8 years
-writes like spoken language
-use of conjunctions (hypotaxis)
-sentences often don't have punctuation
- Stage 3 - Differentation stage
-8-mid teens
-writing becomes less speech-like
-genre awareness develops
-grammar, sentences, punctuation, and structure are complex
- Stage 4 - Integration stage
-mid teens upwards
-expanded vocabulary
-more accurate spelling
-personal writing style developed
Joan Rothery
She investigated young children writing in Australian schools and she divided her findings into 4 categories:
- Observation/ comment - the writer makes observations and evaluative comments. She observed that teachers rated texts only containing observations lower than those that contained both.
- Recounts - chronological recounts of events which are subjective. These follow the pattern of observation-event-reorientation. It is more like a narrative
- Reports - factual descriptions in an objective manner with no chronological sequence.
- Narrative - stories which follow the set order of orientation-complication-resolution-coda. Children often learn this style later on because they find it difficult.
Kress' sentence development theory
- Stage 1 - Pre-conjuction
-basic writing structure
-normally one main clause
-full stops not always used
- Stage 2- Rudimentary conjuction
-writing in chronological sequence
-basic conjunctions used
- Stage 3 - Conjunction
-still writing in sequence
-conjunctions create cohesion
-moving towards compound sentences
- Stage 4 - Subordination
-understanding of the subordinate clause
- Stage 5 - Embedding
-more advanced form of 4
-essentially subordination
Piaget (1964)
Suggests that language comes from understanding; a child use language terms for a concept if they don't understand it
Brice-Heath
She studied 3 towns to investigate how social class and culture affects a child's ability to make literacy progress.
- Maintown (white middle class)
-plentiful exposure to literacy activities
-interrogative mood is used for SPaG
- Roadville (white working class)
-parents wanted children to perform as well as the Maintown children
-children had books but the interrogative element from adults was missing
-these children started education well, but deteriorated over time.
- Frackton
-the oral style of storytelling is cherished
-creativity is more important than accuracy
-there is a lack of books and therefore a lack of comprehension of orthography and syntax
-students can create a story, but have poor spelling
Marie Clay (1970s)
She identified a number of key principles that children adopt in their early writing.
- Recurring principle - when a child only knows a limited number of letters they may use these repeatedly to create a message
- Directional principle - reading and writing from right and then using a return sweep to start the process over again
- Generating principle - the child learns that there are different patters that can be used to convey a message
- Inventory principle - a child begins to package knowledge together into lists of the letters and words that they know
Yetta Goodman (1986)
She categorises children's early writing into 3 principles:
- The functional principle - the notion that writing can serve a purpose and has a function for the writer
- The linguistic principle - the notion that writing is a system that is organised into words and letters and has directionality
- The relational principle children start to connect what they write with spoken words and understand the alphabet carries meaning.