Kessler, Brett, Tatiana Cury Pollo, Rebecca Treiman, & Cláudia Cardoso-Martins. 2013. Frequency analyses of prephonological spellings as predictors of success in conventional spelling. Journal of Learning Disabilities 46(3). 252–259. doi:10.1177/0022219412449440

Abstract

The present study explored how children’s prephonological writing foretells differential learning outcomes in primary school. The authors asked Portuguese-speaking preschool children in Brazil (mean age 4 year 3 months) to spell 12 words. Monte Carlo tests were used to identify the 31 children whose writing was not based on spellings or sounds of the target words. Two and a half years later, the children took a standardized spelling test. The more closely the digram (two-letter sequence) frequencies in the preschool task correlated with those in children’s books, the better scores the children had in primary school, and the more preschoolers used letters from their own name, the lower their subsequent scores. Thus, preschoolers whose prephonological writing revealed attentiveness to the statistical properties of text subsequently performed better in conventional spelling. These analytic techniques may help in the early identification of children at risk for spelling difficulties.

Paper

• Unofficial submitted manuscript, PDF format.
• An earlier version, PDF format. This version contains more detail on the scoring process than the version abridged for publication.
• The final, definitive version is available at http://online.sagepub.com, or via the DOI.

APA citation:

Kessler, B., Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Cardoso-Martins, C. (2013). Frequency analyses of prephonological spellings as predictors of success in conventional spelling. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 46, 252–259. doi:10.1177/0022219412449440