Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of England and the United States

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology 2009-03, Vol.102 (3), p.323-341
• Main Authors: Ellefson, Michelle R., Treiman, Rebecca, Kessler, Brett
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age Differences; Alphabets; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Children & youth; Cognitive style; Comparative Analysis; Comparative studies; Developmental psychology; England; Error Patterns; Experimental psychology; Foreign Countries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language acquisition; Learning; Learning letters; Literacy; Parent Attitudes; Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Questionnaires; Reading Instruction; Sound; Spelling; Task Analysis; Teacher Attitudes; Teaching Methods; United States; Verbal Learning; Young Children
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2008.05.008

Learning about letters is an important foundation for literacy development. Should children be taught to label letters by conventional names, such as /bi/ for b, or by sounds, such as /bə/? We queried parents and teachers, finding that those in the United States stress letter names with young children, whereas those in England begin with sounds. Looking at 5- to 7-year-olds in the two countries, we found that U.S. children were better at providing the names of letters than were English children. English children outperformed U.S. children on letter-sound tasks, and differences between children in the two countries declined with age. We further found that children use the first-learned set of labels to inform the learning of the second set. As a result, English and U.S. children made different types of errors in letter-name and letter-sound tasks. The children’s invented spellings also differed in ways reflecting the labels they used for letters.