Learning Literacy     

We are interested in what children are taught about reading and spelling and in how they are taught these skills throughout their time at school. Most research on children’s reading and writing concentrates on the early stages of literacy.

Our studies, however, show that English-speaking children go on learning about the English orthography for many years and also that their understanding of the structure of spoken language is strongly influenced by what they learn about written language. For example, many spelling patterns in English depend on grammar. “Kissed” is spelled with an “-ed” at the end to signal that it is a past verb: the “-ed” spelling represents the past tense morpheme. We have demonstrated that it often takes children quite a long time to learn how to spell such endings and that this learning is closely connected to their understanding of the grammatical or morphological structure of the words that they have to spell.

We have also found much the same pattern in Greek- and Portuguese-speaking children. Children are not taught a great deal about the connection between grammar or morphology and spelling at schools in England or in other countries, and yet we have established that they find teaching on this topic interesting and enjoyable and learn quickly from it.

We are also working on children’s learning of spelling rules that are conditional. The most famous example of such a rule is about split digraphs like “o-e” and “a-e”; the letter “o” represents one sound in “hop” and another in “hope” and this difference is conditional on the presence or absence of the final “e”. Many children take a long time to learn these rules also. We have shown that they learn conditional rules better if they are given direct contrasts between the different conditions (e.g. direct contrasts between words like “hop” and “hope”) than if they are not. Our work, therefore, suggests new things to teach schoolchildren about written language and thus about spoken language, and new ways of doing this teaching.

Speakers handouts: literacy presentations

• ‘Discovering the secret of words: how morpheme knowledge improves literacy’ Terezinha Nunes, Peter Bryant & Ursula Pretzlik

• ‘Stress and literacy’ Terezinha Nunes & Antonio Roazzi

• ‘Morphemes and Literacy: lessons from research and practice’ Terezinha Nunes

• ‘L’orthographe et le dévelopment de la connaissance de la morphologie’ Terezinha Nunes & Peter Bryant

• ‘Concienciación morfológica y aprendizaje de la lectura’ Terezinha Nunes & Peter Bryant

• ‘Teachers’ representations of intelligence and their consequences for pupils’ Jenni Pitkänen & Terezinha Nunes

• ‘Does it help to be explicit about morphology?’

  Peter Bryant, Terezinha Nunes & Ursula Pretzlik

• ‘Educashon, educatian, education’ Peter Bryant, Terezinha Nunes & Ursula Pretzlik

• ‘Morphology interventions and their impact on children’s spelling and vocabulary’ Terezinha Nunes, Peter Bryant, Jane Hurry, Ursula Pretzlik

• ‘Teachers’ awareness of morphemes & its relationship with teaching and children’s learning’ Terezinha Nunes, Peter Bryant & Jane Hurry

• ‘The place of morphology in development’ Peter Bryant, Terezinha Nunes, Jane Hurry & Ursula Pretzlik

• ‘Why do children sometimes learn something and forget it later?’ Terezinha Nunes with Peter Bryant, Jane Hurry & Ursula Pretzlik

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