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.

中文翻译：

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使用字母名称有利于幼儿的拼写

我们研究了儿童如何开始拼写反映单词发音的拼写。我们要求 75 名美国学龄前儿童（平均年龄 = 4 岁 11 个月）参加两次会议。在一次会议中，孩子们被要求拼写以与字母名称相匹配的一系列声音开头的单词（例如珠子）；在另一个会话中，他们被要求拼写控制词（例如，床）。儿童拼写的语音合理性，特别是他们对单词的第一个音素的拼写，字母名称词的语音合理性高于控制词。当我们将会话中的拼写表现归类为 prephonological 时，如果孩子使用符合语音的字母的频率不超过偶然预期，我们发现儿童在使用控制词的会话中比在使用字母名称词的会话中更有可能成为语音前拼写者。带有字母名称的单词可以帮助儿童从语音前拼写转变为至少象征单词中某些声音的拼写。