Children's Thoughts About Reading and Spelling

Abstract

Most current psychological research on children's reading concentrates either on the various abilities that children need to read or write or on the relative success of different kinds of instruction. Very little attention is being paid to the ways in which children learn orthographic rules. I argue that children typically go through 3 steps in learning a new rule. First they apply a rule that is already in their repertoire but is inadequate. Next, when they realize that this rule is inadequate, they try to extend and adjust it to cover these inadequacies. This adjustment leads them into new experiences that allow them to take the third and final step, which is to form a new and more adequate rule. These steps are similar to the theoretical sequence proposed by Piaget for children's construction of logical rules.