DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS AND INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG PREPRIMARY CHILDREN'S KNOWLEDGE OF WRITING AND READING READINESS SKILLS

This study explored the development and interrelationships relative to preprimary children's knowledge of writing's functions and forms. Furthermore, possible interrelationships among various aspects of their writing knowledge and reading readiness skills were also studied.;Major findings. (1) Knowledge of the communicative purposes of listing, labeling and letter writing increased across age groups. There was a greater understanding of the practical applications of labeling, followed by letter writing, and listing, respectively. (2) There was a significant interaction (p < .005) between children's use of features and recognition rules to distinguish writing forms. With increasing age, children appeared to become more interested in the presence of English letter features in the units than the display's adherence to rules. (3) Using magnetic letters in word production, children experienced the greatest success in their use of the spacing rule, followed by the linearity, directionality, and orthography rules, respectively. (4) While one-half of the three-year-olds drew pictures to represent their names, all of the five-year-old children wrote at least their first name. (5) Performance scores on the reading readiness measures increased across age group. (6) As measured by these tasks, the significant interrelationships among the various aspects of reading readiness and writing knowledge varied among the age groups.;Tasks were administered to 48 middle income children composing three, four, and five-year-old groups. Knowledge of writing functions was assessed using story vignettes designed to tap children's understanding of three everyday uses of writing. Three tasks assessed knowledge of writing forms. The first task measured their use of unit features and/or recognition rules: linearity, spacing, variety, and multiplicity, in visually discerning writing forms. The second and third tasks assessed knowledge of production rules: directionality, linearity, spacing, and orthography, via forming words with magnetic letters; and name writing skills with paper and pencil, respectively. The three reading readiness tasks assessed auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, and letter naming knowledge.