MADELON SAADA-ROBERT, KRISTINE BALSLEV
4. RESULTS
Regarding acquisition of the alphabetic system, our results focus on the transition between the logographic and the alphabetic phases of literacy acquisition. In order to investigate this transition, results are presented in three parts: 1) description of the emergent writing strategies encountered with four year-old children; 2) strategies’
evolution during the school year; and finally 3) results on the alphabetic system ac- quisition: letter naming, letter spelling and phonemic awareness.
4.1 Emergent Writing Strategies
In order to analyze the children’s productions, writing strategies are defined accord- ing to two criteria: their content (adapted from previous studies, i.e., Ehri, 1990;
Ferreiro, 1988; Saada-Robert & Hoefflin, 2000; Saada-Robert & Favrel, 2001) and their developmental complexity (Frith, 1985; Ehri, 1997; Seymour, 1997, Rieben &
Saada-Robert, 1997). They are listed below (table 1) in a developmental order, go- ing from the more basic strategies (for example scribbles or waves) to the more complex ones (use of letters in phonographic correspondence).
At four years old in kindergarten, children mainly produce logographic and (par- tial) alphabetic strategies, confirming previous studies. The logographic strategies are twofold (see fig.1). First, they involve the use of signs or marks characterized by 1) the intention to produce meaning and 2) the awareness of the writings’ represen- tational nature and of its difference with drawings. Children make discontinuous and
7 Phonological segmentation at the beginning of words: from animal pictures, the child starts by naming the animals, then is asked to say the sound he hears at the very beginning of the word. The words are all bisyllabic and the first vowels are of CV, VC, or CCV type.
quick scribbles or waves (pictorial imitation of the writer’s gesture, IMP in fig.1) and produce some isolated units resembling letters or numbers, pseudo-letters and some awkwardly drawn letters (semiographic marks, GRA in fig.1). Second, the logographic strategies in writing involve the use of known letters (logographically memorized without the corresponding name or sound, LOG in fig.1) written in lines, and the more evolved strategy of writing different words with different letters and a number of letters that changes according to the length of the word to be written8 (VNP in fig.1). Alphabetic strategies are first used while children become aware of the necessity to write only the letters that are in phonetic correspondence with the word to be written. After the first awareness that written words are composed of discontinuous signs representing concepts that are also spoken words, the logo- graphic strategies lead to a more abstract awareness, i.e., written words are made of letters that have to differaccording to the quality of the different spoken words. The alphabetic strategy deals with a third type of constraint, still more complex and re- quiring. The written words are strictly composed of the precise letters that fit the exact phonological components of the spoken words. This requirement is first ap- plied to the first sound heard in the word, or to the rime (for example, city could be written S I), later to the syllable (city could be written S T, see the SYL strategy in fig.2), last to the phoneme (S I T I, see the ALP strategy in fig.2). Finally, for the population of this study, lexical strategies take into account the segmentation of the words, the blank spaces that mark the external limits of the word unit (LEX in fig.2).
Later in the acquisition process, the orthographic strategies add a new constraint to the learner: the constraint dealing with the whole word unit, written altogether as a visual and a spelled unit, involving the specificities of each written system.
Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the writing strategies. Figure 1 shows the variety of strate- gies composing the logographic phase preceding the alphabetic awareness. The use of semiotic marks, of non-conventional discontinuous signs, of pseudo-letters, and the use of very few known letters (known as pictures before being known by name
8 As shown by Ferreiro (1988), the length of the word can be its effective graphic length (train being shorter than locomotive) or, at that developmental level, the representational length of the concept (train being obviously much longer than the sole locomotive).
or sound) spelled in different ways according to the spoken words, characterize the logographic phase in a positive constructivist manner preceding the alphabetic one.
The pictural imitation (IMP) strategies contain semiopictural strategies (scribbles) and graphic imitations of the writer’s gesture (waves).
The semiographic strategy (GRA) is composed of discontinuous graphic signs, pseudo-letters, a few known letters (from the first name or familiar words) and numbers, dispatched all over the paper sheet.
This production shows a LOG strategy: the letters are produced in line without phonetic correspon- dence but they match with the writing project: the child “reads” his production, recalling his project, but the pointing of the letters does not fit the length of the line.
The child understands that print necessarily con- tains different letters for different words and a minimum number of letters, depending on the spoken words. Nevertheless the writing project is most often not recalled, the child being focused on the variation and number of the letters he writes (VNP strategy).
Figure 1. Examples of logographic writing strategies.
This example shows the awareness of the alphabetic principle. The child wrote
“Léo rentre à la maison avec son papa” (Leo goes back home with his dad).
The syllabic strategy (SYL) is used for “la maison”
= L M S, and “son” = S, in an attempt of phono- graphic correspondence marked with consonants.
The alphabetic strategy (ALP) drives the writing of the other words (“ront” for “rentre”, “AVC” for
“avec”).
Finally, “Leo”, “papa” and “Theodore” (the child’s name) are conventionally written with the lexical strategy (LEX) that involves the constraint of the word segmentation in addition to the alphabetic strategy.
Figure 2. Examples of alphabetic writing strategies in one text.
This definition of the logographic phase is consistent with Frith (1985) and Seymour (1997), whereas others (Ehri, 1997; Sprenger-Charolles & Casalis, 1996; Sprenger- Charolles, Siegel & Béchennec, 1997) consider this phase as pre-alphabetic or even non-linguistic, by stating that the reading/writing process only starts with the use of letters matched with sounds. In a developmental and constructivist point of view however, this position appears as reductionist. The results presented here also point out that the alphabetic phase includes several evolving strategies that can be syl- labic, alphabetic or lexical, A constructivist approach of the children’s emergent writing productions leads to consider the acquisition process as both discontinuous and continuous. The gap between the logographic and the alphabetic strategies is well marked by the use of phonographic strategies. On the other hand, the continuity from the first to the second appears in the links children make between spoken and written words, well before the phonographic correspondence. The first link deals with the early use of discontinuous signs for writing (opposed to drawing) in order to communicate and produce meaning as in speech. Second, the progressive use of letters, and then the necessity of change in the variety and number of letters accord- ing to the spoken words, are previous strategies leading to the more constraining and later link of phonography between spoken and written words that characterizes the alphabetic phase.
4.2 Evolution of Strategies during the School Year
Regarding acquisition of the alphabetic system and within the evolution of emergent writing strategies, our results focus on two important transitions. The first one is the transition between the use of signs (GRA strategies) and the use of letters (LOG and VNP strategies). The second one concerns the awareness that letters must be used in phonographic correspondence, i.e., the transition between the LOG and VNP strate- gies (logographic phase) to the SYL strategies (alphabetic phase).
Table 2 presents the frequencies and percentages of emergent writing strategies for the group of 18 children at the four times during the year. Each production is written according to one or more strategies. At the beginning of the year (T1), only
16 children were present and they wrote in a single homogeneous way.
Four points can be stressed from these results. At first, the quantity of total writ- ing strategies increases9 from T1 to T4 (16, 27, 33, 43). At T1, each production is homogenously composed and the strategies are exclusively IMP, GRA (dominant with 56.3%) and LOG. From T2 on, the increasing number of strategies indicates that different strategies appear in one single production, even more so at T4 (end of the year) than at T3 or T2.
Secondly, concerning the type of strategies that evolve, it is mostly the more complex strategies that increase, whereas the basic strategies tend to stabilize or decrease. Logographic strategies, essentially GRA, dominant at T1 and still at T2, decrease from 56.3% to only 7% at T4. LOG and VNP strategies become dominant
9 The changes pointed out in this research cannot be statistically tested because of the low number of strategies and subjects.
at T3 (30.3% and 24.2%) and remain approximately at the same percentage at T4 (23.3% for both of them). Alphabetic strategies, mainly SYL and ALP increase.
There are none at T1 and they become very close to dominance at T4 (respectively 11.6 and 18.6). When added together, SYL and ALP strategies are dominant with 30.2% of all the strategies observed at T4. Lexical strategies that concern the word segmentation in addition to the alphabetic principle also increase from none at T1 to 9.3% of all the strategies used at T4.
Regarding the dominant strategies, they evolve from semiographic ones (GRA) at T1 and T2, to the logographic use of letters (LOG and VNP) at T3 and T4, with a strong presence of alphabetic strategies at T4 (SYL and ALP totalizing 30.2% of the strategies).
The last point concerns persistent strategies that do not decisively decrease with time, such as the basic imitative pictural strategy (IMP: discontinuous scribbles and waves). Table 2 shows that all strategies are present at T3 and T4, even the more basic ones. The choice of strategies enlarges with time and children finally use basic strategies as well as evolved ones, depending on the constraint of the task and the didactic context. In contrast with Ferreiro (1988) who explains progression of writ- ing in terms of discrete stages, our results show that acquisition in situated writing appears as a change in a dominance of strategies, which confirms the results of a previous research (Rieben & Saada-Robert, 1997) and not in replacement of a less evolved strategy by a more complex one. In short, these results show that four year- old children in kindergarten evolve during one year in their writing from a logo- graphic phase to the alphabetic one. They also point out the difficulty to isolate these two phases insofar as learning/teaching occurs in ecological contexts and is analyzed within a developmental constructivist approach. The evolution occurs through changes in the dominance of strategies and not in the replacement of simple ones by complex ones. The two main evolutions occur at T3 with the passage from GRA to LOG and VNP, i.e., the passage from the use of semiographic marks to the use of letters, and at T4 with the passage from letters without phonographic correspon- dence to use of phonographic correspondence, either applied to the syllable or to the phoneme, Moreover, regarding the evolution within children, only two of them use
the same strategies as dominant ones between T1 and T4, whereas the sixteen other children progress from one dominance to the next ones. The results also show, in a descriptive way, that emergent writing settings in kindergarten are good conditions for the acquisition of the alphabetic system’s awareness.
4.3 Results Concerning the Alphabetic System
The question dealing with the links between emergent writing strategies and the al- phabetic system leads to compare results that are drawn from the psycholinguistic tasks (individual conditions) and from the didactic settings (class conditions). These two conditions offer different data concerning the acquisition of the alphabetic sys- tem. They allow considering the evolution from discontinuous graphic signs and pseudo-letters, to letters used in a logographic way, finally to letters used in phono- graphic correspondence. The following points are described: 1) evolution from T1 to T4 of the amount of letters spelled in individual task and the evolution of the num- ber ofdiscontinuous graphic signs written in didactic settings (figure 3) that are not yet letters; 2) progression of the amount of named and spelled letters in individual task and the amount of written letters in didactic settings (figure 4); 3) evolution of phonemic awareness (individual task) and the number ofphonographic correspon- dences in didactic settings (figure 5).
Figure 3. Evolution from T1 to T4 of the amount of letters spelled in individual task (LES) and the number of discontinuous graphic signs written in didactic settings (DGS).
Figure 3 shows a difference in the evolution of the two results. The amount of dis- continuous graphic signs (DGS curve) produced in the four didactic settings rapidly
increases between T1 and T2, then decreases. Children where asked to “write as they know, as they can, the story of the drawing” they previously made. At T4 this amount is not far from the amount of letters written by the same children when asked to “write as you know all the letters you know” (LES curve). Whereas the amount of known letters that are written progresses in a linear way (LES), the amount of any discontinuous sign for producing meaning (DGS) increases consid- erably from T1 to T2 then decreases. At T2 and T3, children produce an important amount of graphic signs when they are asked to “write the story”. They are fully involved in the class setting, while they spell very few known letters in the task con- dition. But their written production decreases at T4, as if they became aware of the necessity to use letters in order to write. We can here hypothesize that the class con- dition offers children a way to enter the writer’s social role, to become aware of the first properties of written language (made of discontinuous graphic signs) and of the necessity to use conventional signs that are letters in order to represent spoken mes- sages. Furthermore they are going to learn the name, the sound and the pictural form of the letters from the teacher and other partners of the classroom. How does letter knowledge evolve during one school year at four years old? Letter knowledge in- volves letter naming, spelling and writing (figure 4).
Figure 4. Progression between T1 and T4 of the number of named (LEN) and spelled letters (LES) in individual tasks and the number of written letters produced in didactic settings
(LEW).
Figure 4 shows that from the beginning of the school year (T1) and increasingly at T2 and T3, children in didactic settings write letters (LEW curve) in addition to the discontinuous signs mentioned in figure 3, even if they cannot name them (LEN curve) or spell them (LES curve). These two last curves are slightly different, the
named letters being more frequent than the spelled ones. Again, writing in didactic settings seems to be more productive at the beginning of the year, but strongly de- creases with time. At T4, the amount of written letters in the didactic condition be- comes equal to the amount of named letters in the task condition, as if children start to realize that they cannot write just any letter for all the different spoken words they intend to write. Thus, the role of known letters on the written production is marked, but in reverse, at the beginning of the acquisition process, the hypothesis can be made of the role of writing any letters, a lot of letters, as a drive to assert the limits of this strategy and the necessity to learn their name and spelling. We can also notice from the qualitative individual productions that during the class settings, the children write or know different letters than during the individual task situation. The amount of named, spelled and written letters appears to become much the same at T4, but there are individual differences between these three skills for most children, which indicates that there is no stability in their letter knowledge. Considering their age, these results are not surprising, the alphabetic system being still in construction. The third figure deals with the other main component of the alphabetic system: phono- graphic correspondence.
Figure 5. Evolution between T1 and T4 of the scores in the phonemic segmentation task (PSE, maximum score = 12) and the number of phonographic correspondences used in didactic
settings (PGC).
In Figure 5, the results concerning the phonological segmentation (PSE curve) and the phoneme/grapheme correspondence (PGC curve) are shown. They both evolve between T1 and T4. Nevertheless, the scores in the phonological segmentation task are higher than the amount of letters spelled in phonographic correspondence at T1, T2 and T3. Only at T4 do the results become very close. As expected the task of
segmenting the first sound heard in a word is easier than searching for the proper letter corresponding to each of the segmented sounds that compose a word. Phono- logic segmentation appears to be part of the alphabetic system acquisition, with let- ter knowledge and phonographic correspondence.
In addition and concerning the relations between strategies occurring in didactic settings and skills appearing in the psycholinguistic individual tasks, some hypothe- ses can be formulated. At T1, few letters are named, spelled or written. This could explain why children mainly use logographic strategies; for example, children who use the IMP strategy name and spell four letters at most. At T2 and T3, the knowl- edge of letters, their naming, spelling or writing, (LEN, LES and LEW) increases and a parallel could be drawn with the evolution of the strategies. More the children become aware that letters are necessary to write, more they produce with the LOG and VNP strategies. At T4, children realize that any letter cannot be written for any word and any sound in the word: they use more and more alphabetic strategies along with the phonographic processes.