 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing everything you need to know about child language acquisition. My name is Barbara and in this video we'll examine the stages of children's writing development. Do bear in mind that we have plenty of other videos looking at other areas of child language acquisition including videos on theories relating to child language acquisition as well as case studies, so do make sure you check them out on our channel. However, let's get started on examining children's writing development. Now in the early stages of learning to read and write, young children compose before they know much about the conventions of writing and reading or have the skill to control a pencil or crayon or form letters. Children in preschool often write and read in unconventional forms using scribblings, drawings, letter-like marks and so on and these are not mistakes, in fact, young children are encouraged to write it without worrying about the mechanics of writing. Now one important theorist that has done a lot of work around children's written language and written development is Dr. Kathy Barclay who identified seven stages of children's writing. The first stage she identified as scribbling. Now in this stage, the children make random marks on a page and to encourage children at this stage, adults can offer blank paper and writing tools to talk with children about the writing. The second stage is mock handwriting and this often appears with drawings. Children produce lines with wavy scribbles and this stage resembles cursive writing and may be visited at a later time. The third stage is mock letters so children make letter-like shapes that resemble conventional alphabet letters. The next stage is conventional letters and at this stage the first word to appear is usually a child's first name. Adults will often see a string of letters across a page that a child reads as a sentence. This is known as an invented spelling stage in the next stage and as the child writes conventional letters, they begin to cluster letters to make words and although words may not appear conventional, children will often ask an adult, what did I write? Now in stage six, this is called the approximated or phonetic spelling stage. Children at this stage begin to associate sounds with letters and the final stage, the seventh stage is a conventional spelling stage and this occurs as the child's approximated spellings become more and more conventional and they resemble normal adult writing. Now when it comes to understanding functions of children's writing, there are the following five functions that children have to learn when it comes to the functions of writing. The first is called practical. Now most of us make lists, jot down reminders, write notes and instructions and of course children will learn this function. The next function is job related. Now this of course children might learn much much later on in their older however of course this function is related to professional and white collar workers who write frequently. The third function is stimulating. Now writing which helps provoke thoughts and organism logically and concisely. This is another important function of writing. The fourth is social. So most of us write thank you notes, invitations and letters to friends occasionally and of course children as they grow older realize that they can use writing to engage with other people not only through speaking and the fifth is the therapeutic function of writing and this can be helpful to express feelings and writing that can't be expressed by easily speaking such as journaling and of course this is when children are much older however this is a really important function of writing to bear in mind. Now when it comes to stages of writing development, learning to write is much more than a motor skill. It can be studied in conjunction with children's emerging cognitive, social and linguistic abilities and being able to write enables children to formulate thoughts and reflect on meaning and this is part of the process of learning and in addition to motor ability and functional awareness children develop structures of language in tandem. Now one other theorist called Kroll recognized four stages of development. The first which is takes place between four to seven years old is what he terms as the preparatory stage and this is where basic motor skills develop and principles of the spelling system are acquired by children to the start understanding the ABCs and so on. The next stage which takes place at approximately seven to nine years old is called the consolidation stage according to Kroll. Children at this stage begin to use writing to express what they can already say in speech and their writing closely reflects the patterns of spoken language. There may be colloquialisms in other words slang, casual language, strings of clauses linked by and as well as unfinished sentences so this is all very typical characteristics of their writing during this age. Now the next stage is the differentiation stage and this happens at nine years and older so here writing begins to diverge from speech and develops its own patterns and organizations although errors are common at first as children learn new standards and experiment on new structures they start to make less and less errors and the written work becomes fuller more diverse and they encounter the need to produce different kinds of writing for different audiences and purposes and of course do remember this is now tied into them understanding the different functions of writing. At this point children need guidance about structures and functions of written language and they realize that writing is a medium where there's time to reflect rethink and use language as a way of shaping thought and thus they begin to draft, revise and edit. The next stage is the integration stage which takes place at 14 years and older this is when children now become teenagers. In this instance writers will have such a good command of language that they can vary their stylistic choices at will and develop a personal voice and this continues to develop throughout adult life. Now it's important to obviously understand the features of the English writing system. Now the first is to do with controlling and holding a pen and of course children will need to understand this. The next is called directionality the idea that they need to learn that writing goes from left to right. Another feature that children will need to understand when it comes to the English writing system is the alignment of the writing. The writing will need to start going more on a straight line so very young children sometimes find it really difficult to write on a straight line and it tends to go quite wonky and it's all over the place however the older they get the more they understand the importance of aligning their writing. Also another feature of the English writing system that they learn is using upper and lower case in other words capital letters but also when not to use capital letters. Another thing they have to learn is to do with spacing words appropriately on the line or page as well as understanding and applying principles of sentence construction and children will also need to understand and apply the conventions of punctuation the need to understand when to use full stops, commas, semicolons and so on. Another important feature of the English writing system that children start getting used to more and more is letter directionality so many letters face a particular direction for instance b and d as well as s and the more they get older and the more they practice the more they learn the correct letter directionality. Also children learn more and more how to select appropriate words and use appropriate graphemic combinations to spell them and later they start learning how to produce cursive which is joined up writing as well as learning forms and conventions for genres of writing such as what they can write when it comes to a letter versus a story and they also learn more and more how to use skills of assessing to monitor and correct their writing as and when they make mistakes. Now when it comes to the different stages which have outlined it's it can be summarized in a very interesting and neat chart of this so as you can see here on the left hand side I've written the stage and then the center there's the description of this stage and then there's a little bit of analysis. Let's first start off with stage one which is drawing and sign writing. Now in this stage children often experiment with the kind of sign writing which they regard as being different from drawing they begin to understand that we use marks on the page to pass on ideas from writers to readers and signs show some characteristics of writing on the page such as succession of characters in a line. Now when it comes to analyzing this particular stage of drawing and sign writing now the first breakthrough comes when children learn to recognize that there is a difference between drawing and writing between shapes and signs. Children learn that writing in English is distributed along straight lines and direction which is from left to right matters and they learn that the distribution of blank space is also important. Now the second stage which is to do with letter-like forms is whereby we find that individual signs are produced and some have letter-like features. Now in this instance children start to recognize the different shapes for the alphabet and they copy these. The third stage is copied letters and here the child was able to overwrite, underwrite or copy letters sufficiently and accurately for them to be all recognized. Now this is a difficult task when it comes to the number of different upper and lowercase letters for children as well as them understanding the importance of minute distinctions relating to their relative size orientation and position. Also children at this stage learn to associate these with different sounds and names or in other words they learn to associate letters and words with different sounds and names however another difficulty that children experience comes from the fact that the same letters in English can represent different sounds in different contexts. The fourth stage is when it comes to child's name and them stringing together letters so children will start independently writing strings of letters usually including their own name and in this stage children start to recognize that groups of letters tend to occur together. Many first learn this in connection with their own name usually they learn it as a sight word without first being able to analyze it into letter components. Children also begin to recognize that otherwise they come across frequently have similar strings of letters at the beginning and at the end. Now the fifth stage which is called words. Now children in this stage learn the sounds associated with groups of letters and what they represent when it comes to familiar spoken words and they also learn to understand the principles underlying the use of the alphabet. Now this breakthrough to literacy comes when children learn to associate the sounds linked to groups of letters with speaking words that they know. They have thus understood the alphabetic principles and we can approximately represent the sounds of using letters. Now the next stage which is to do with sentences in this stage children have learned to write confidently and they can begin to express some ideas and writing that link several concepts together in sentences. They also need to learn how to use clauses and sentences to do this and thus once they do they can do this using capital letters and full stops systematically and in this stage children have to learn the conventions we use to show how groups of words are linked together in sentences but the systematic use of grammatical punctuation including full stops and a capital letter to start a sentence is something that almost always occurs after a child has began to write text confidently. In the seventh stage writing text involves combining clauses or sentences expressed related ideas and children learn to combine clauses and sentences to convey a sequence of related ideas. Texts are often defined as writing involving a series of related sentences and hence children can now start writing short stories in this stage and texts become more coherent in meaning and what they write becomes more cohesive in structure. It's not just a list of unconnected sentences they start learning at this stage how to really join up the sentences and also how to make the ideas in each sentence consistent. Now there's several different parallel systems that break down the developmental stages of spelling into understandable categories and this is one of the four stages although there are several other good systems divided into six and eight categories when it comes to the developmental stages of spelling. So now let's look at one of the popular stages that comes with the stages of spelling in a child's life. Now the first stage is called exploration and this is the pre-letter writing stage. You'll find here in this stage that children have lots of random writing on the page. There's letters, symbols and numbers and they may use repetition of familiar letters such as a letter in their name and they use left-to-right directionality as well as random sight words. The second stage is called the semaphonetic stage and at this stage children tend to leave random spaces in writing. They use few words in correct places for instance in names and they show some letter and sound correspondence. They can also use initial consonants and they can also use partial mapping of words so two or three letters. In the third stage which we'll call phonetic there's a total mapping of letter and sound correspondence and vowels tend to be omitted in their writing if they can't hear them. Also children start writing a bit more quickly and they start spacing the words a bit more correctly and letters are assigned strictly on the basis of br bar or prt party. Now in the fourth stage which we call transitional vowels appear in every syllable and the silent e pattern becomes fixed and you'll find that children have inflectional endings like s or i and g being used. Also common letter sequences are used such as a, e and o and children move towards visual spelling and they may include or but sometimes reverse some letters. Now of course there's so much to consider so when it comes to actually writing about child's written development here is a framework that you can consider when talking about children's writing. Now in your introduction you should attempt to describe the text overall paying attention to pragmatics and discourse so when it comes to pragmatics ask yourself what is the context of the text how much can you work out and how much cannot be known and of course this is when you're presented with a piece of a child's writing that you need to analyze. You should also ask yourself when it comes to pragmatics who is a child writing for when you're looking at this and is a text that you're analyzing determined by a teacher and does it show evidence of being guided. Also try and decide on the genre of the text that the child writes such as whether it's a narrative text or report. Now the thing of course related to discourse is look at the overall structure of what the child has written if it's a narrative piece or a report and how the ideas are organized and also how cohesive the text is whether there are discourse markers used. Also in your writing when you're analyzing a piece of a child's writing consider the lexis of the text so for instance ask yourself the following questions how appropriate is the register is any of the texts similar to speech is any of the lexis field specific also perhaps has the child prepared for this topic by reading about it to have they use conjunctions is the description and what kind for instance have they started using adjectives adverbs explanatory clauses and so on. Also make sure you consider the grammar of the text and ask yourself the following questions what sentence types are there are sentence boundaries appropriate how well is punctuation used and what tenses are used in the text are they used correctly or does a child change tense at the wrong time. Also is speech reproduced correctly in their writing and do they perhaps use passive as well as active voice in their writing. Also when you're examining a child's piece of writing do consider graphological features so look at for example the directionality of the writing does it get from letter to right top to bottom also look at the overall spatial organization so for instance the images included with the text are there any headings if this is an information text or title and consider how closely this matches the appearance of standard text in the chosen genre. Also consider the size of letters are they consistent and are they able to use upper and lowercase letters reversal of letters such as d and b for instance as well as joined up cursive writing. Also try and consider the spelling of their text so for instance use the terminology that you've learned in previous parts of this video to describe the spelling choices made by the child in particular consider how the phonetic the spellings are how much whole word knowledge the child has and how many virtuous errors they make which reveal a basic understanding of underlying spelling rules and also remember to take into account the type of words which the child is trying to spell are they high frequency words or are they more usual okay so that's it if you found this video useful would really appreciate it if you gave it a big thumbs up but also consider subscribing to our channel also make sure you visit our website www.firstreadteachers.com there you will find lots of useful revision materials for this topic as well as several other topics across english thank you so much for listening