Learning to Write: Learning to Read

Learning to write and read is a complex process that involves several cognitive, linguistic, and social abilities. Typically, children start recognizing letters and words before they start writing them.
The process of reading acquisition begins with the development of phonemic awareness – the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. This is a fundamental step to map phonemes to graphemes.
Once phonemic awareness is developed, children start to make sense of the alphabetic principle – the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.
The stage of emergent literacy, which occurs before formal education, involves the development of print awareness (understanding the function and value of written language) and story understanding (comprehending the narrative and meaning of a text).
In terms of learning to write, the initial stage involves the motor skills necessary for handwriting. This is often referred to as ‘mark-making’ and children may start to create symbols that represent letters and words.
As children grow more confident in these physical writing skills, they begin to understand and experiment with the symbolic function of writing: the understanding that print carries meaning and can be used to communicate.
‘Invented spelling’ is a phase in children’s literacy development where they use their knowledge of sounds to guess the spelling of words – this demonstrates the understanding of the alphabetic principle.
There’s a significant impact of adult input and literacy rich environments on children’s literacy development. Adults who engage children in conversation about books, reading, and writing promote vocabulary development, understanding of story structure, and print knowledge.
Regular exposure to books can contribute to an early understanding of print concepts – such as reading from left to right and from top to bottom, and that print carries meaning.
Both reading and writing are recursive skills; they build upon previous knowledge and continue to develop and refine over time. They also mutually reinforce each other.
Learning to read and write is a socio-cultural learning process, shaped by the child’s cultural and educational contexts.