Learning the sounds of letters is an important part of learning a writing system. Most previous studies of this process have examined English, focusing on variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names as a reason why some letter sounds (such as that of b, where the sound is at the beginning of the letter's name) are easier to learn than…

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children's word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as…

Preschoolers' metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n = 43), Hebrew (n = 40), and Cantonese (n = 63) and the…

Children's ability to read and spell their own and classmates' personal names in and out of context in Hebrew was studied. Preliterate children aged 4 to 6 years (N = 60) showed high knowledge of their own names but varied greatly in knowledge of others' names and emergent literacy skills. Reading and spelling of names was primarily related to…

English-speaking children spell letters correctly more often when the letters' names are heard in the word (e.g., B in "beach" vs. "bone"). Hebrew letter names have been claimed to be less useful in this regard. In Study 1, kindergartners were asked to report and spell initial and final letters in Hebrew words that included full (CVC), partial…

This study investigated knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, their learning, and their contributions to word recognition. Of 123 preschoolers examined on letter knowledge, 65 underwent training on both letter names and letter sounds in a counterbalanced order. Prior to training, children were more advanced in associating letters with their…

Arabic Literacy acquisition was studied among Israeli Palestinian low socioeconomic status kindergartners within the framework of an intervention study, implemented by teachers. On pretest, letter naming, alphabetic awareness, and phonological awareness were very low. Whereas the comparison group hardly progressed throughout the year, the…

Letter names play an important role in early literacy. Previous studies of letter name learning have examined the Latin alphabet. The current study tested learners of Hebrew, comparing their patterns of performance and types of errors with those of English learners. We analyzed letter-naming data from 645 Israeli children who had not begun formal…