What is Written in a Written Sentence? A Developmental Answer

Abstract

The results of research with 4- to 6-year-old, Spanish-speaking children, aimed at investigating the meaning they attach to the segmentation of a written sentence, are classified in six developmentally ordered categories of responses. Children who cannot yet read (in the conventional sense) nevertheless have very precise ideas about what can be found in a written text. They do not deal with the different parts of a sentence in the same manner: at first children do not expect the verb to be written; then the verb is supposed to be graphically represented, but articles are not. Acquiring knowledge about the writing system is a cognitive process that appears to be very close in nature to those studied within the framework of Piaget's theory.