Ellefson, M. R., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (in press). Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of England and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Projected DOI 10.1016/j.jecp.2008.05.008.
This is a preprint of an article that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the only definitive repository of the content that has been certified and accepted after peer review. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by Elsevier. This material may not be copied or reposted without explicit permission.
Learning about letters is an important foundation for literacy development. Should children be taught to label letters by conventional names, such as /bi/ for b, or by sounds, such as /bə/? We queried parents and teachers, finding those in the U.S. stress letter names with young children whereas those in England begin with sounds. Looking at 5- to 7-year-old children in the two countries, we found that U.S. children were better at providing the names of letters than English children. English children outperformed U.S. children on letter-sound tasks, and differences between children in the two countries declined with age. We further found that children use the first-learned set of labels to inform the learning of the second set. As a result, English and U.S. children made different types of errors in letter-name and letter-sound tasks. The children’s invented spellings also differed in ways reflecting the labels they used for letters.
Last change 2008-06-03 22:16:38-05:00