Invented spelling programmes and the access to the alphabetic principle in kindergarten

Abstract

This study aims to understand the effects of two invented spelling programmes in the development of children's invented spelling, namely to the phonetization of writing and to understand the correlations between phonological awareness and knowledge of letters and the phonetization procedures. Fifty-six five-year-old were divided into two experimental groups and one control group. In the pre and post-tests, children's spellings were accessed through pseudo-words that contained fricatives and stops worked during the programmes and other non worked phonemes, both in initial and in final position. In between, G1 worked the grapho-phonetic correspondences of fricatives and G2 of stop consonants. Results show that both experimental groups achieved greater progress in spelling than the control group with no statistically significant differences between the experimental groups. In these groups the participants were able to spell the worked and the non worked phonemes in initial and in final position correctly. In G1, statistically significant differences were found, with better results in the phonetization of the worked fricatives in initial position than in final position. The results also indicated that the number of letters known in the pre-test has a significant correlation with the number of phonetizations in the post-test, whereas phonological awareness does not.