Many studies(Clay, 1972; Rossman, 1980; Hildebreth, 1936; Schickedanz, 1978) showed that young children's reading-writing behaviors develop through certain fixed stages. To investigate whether Korean childern also follow similar developmental stages o...
Many studies(Clay, 1972; Rossman, 1980; Hildebreth, 1936; Schickedanz, 1978) showed that young children's reading-writing behaviors develop through certain fixed stages. To investigate whether Korean childern also follow similar developmental stages of reading, the authors of this study revised Clay and Rossman's reading development stages according to the results of a pilot study and proposed six hierachical stages of reading development. They are: (1) pre-reading stage, (2) making-up stage, (3) paraphrasing stage, (4) the stage of paraphrasing plus repeating actual words by memory, (5) the stage of paraphrasing plus reading actual words of the text, and (6) the stage of reading actual words of the text. The authors also proposed that there are two transitional stages between stages 1 and 2 and stages 5 and 6.
The authors also revised the Hildebreth and Schickedanz' writing development stages as follow: (1) scribbling stage, (2) the stage of appearance of one or two distinctive features of print, (3) the stage of appearance of intentional markings that look like actual alphabet letters, (4) the stage of creating actual letters, (5) the stage creating actual words, and (6) the stage of creating sentences.
The main purpose of this study were to see whether the development of reading and writing behavior followed the hypothesized stages in order and to examine the effects of undirective teaching method of reading. Besides of these purposes, this study had two additional purposes of seeing whether reading readiness had effects on young childen's development of reading and writing behaviors and of developing a good reading and writing readiness scale.
For these purposes, 32 preschoolers of age 3 to 5, were selected from the kindergarten located in middle class neighbors on the basis of reading-writing readiness scores and classified into high and low readiness groups. Those who were able to read were excluded from the sample. A half of each group(while the other half served as controls) were observed individually during undirective reading sessions in which the children were read 4 storybooks and asked to read them back to the experimentet once everyweek over a three month period. The children's responses during these sessions were audiorecorede and transcribed on coding sheets afterwards.
The data were analyzed with the stastical method of correlations and ANOVA. The results showed that preschooler's reading and writing behaviors progressed through the hypothesized stages and the undirective teaching method in reading facilitated their development. The results also showed that the reading and writing readiness scale consisting of subtests of visual discrimination, phonological awareness, and abilities of drawing basic lines, had a moderate predictability in reading and writing development in the future. Furthermore, this study demonstrated significant differences in reading ability between low and high readiness groups.
The results of this study suggest that we, educators in early childhood education, should understand young children's reading-writing developmental stages and encourage them to read and write actively on their own level and to retain their initial interest in reading and writing. The results also imply that the undirective method of reading and writing could be a good example of such encouragement.