Use of Letter Names Benefits Young Children’s Spelling

Abstract

We studied how children begin to produce spellings that reflect the sounds in words. We asked 75 U.S. preschoolers (mean age = 4 years, 11 months) to participate in two sessions. In one session, the children were asked to spell words (e.g., bead) that begin with a sequence of sounds that matches the name of a letter; in another session, they were asked to spell control words (e.g., bed). The phonological plausibility of children’s spellings, particularly their spellings of the words’ first phonemes, was higher for letter-name words than for control words. When we categorized spelling performance in a session as prephonological if the child used phonologically appropriate letters no more often than would be expected by chance, we found that children were more likely to be prephonological spellers in the session with control words than in the session with letter-name words. Words with letter names can help children move from prephonological spellings to spellings that symbolize at least some of the sounds in words.