[...]... new words on their own, as long as they are regular words that follow the taught rules Words that deviate from the taught rules, such as sword, are introduced as exceptions to be individually memorized Teachers sometimes refer to these 14   How Children Learn to Write Words |  words as sight words, because children are urged to read them quickly, without trying to translate the individual letters into... applied it to the learning of computer programming He suggested that children learn the Logo computer programming language by immersing themselves in a Logo environment As children try to program, 12   How Children Learn to Write Words |  they generate hypotheses about how the language works Children test their hypotheses by writing programs and observing the results If a program doesn’t work, children. .. Transmission of tool use from one generation to the next is facilitated not only by children s drive to fit in but also by adults’ tendency to demonstrate and explain (Csibra & Gergely, 2009) Adults may consciously or unconsciously modify their tool use in an attempt to help children learn about the tool They may signal that an action is intended for children to imitate, they may take steps to ensure that children. .. 2000) The children judged the stories with spelling errors to be less well written, less interesting, and harder to read than the stories without Moreover, children judged the writers of the stories containing spelling errors to be worse students and less careful than the writers of the stories without spelling errors But the negative judgments don’t generalize to all aspects of life The children didn’t... book is to examine what types of writing systems exist in modern societies and how children learn to use these systems for purposes of production We discuss how children learn about such things as the shapes and names of letters, the spelling of individual words, and capitalization and punctuation These are all part of orthography, the correct way of using a writing system to write a language To set... spelling, capitalization, and punctuation tend to show poor organization and content as well (Olinghouse, 2008) 10   How Children Learn to Write Words |  Children are ardent enforcers of cultural norms, including those related to spelling and handwriting The child who said that, if you are a poor speller, “everybody’s going to think that you don’t go to school.      and your mother doesn’t care” (Wilde,... remainder of this book 1.1  Writing as a Tool Writing is one of many tools that people have developed to circumvent their natural limitations To understand the nature of writing, and to understand how children learn to produce it, it is helpful to view writing within the framework of tools more generally Some of the limitations that motivate the development of tools reflect people’s physical characteristics... internalizing a tool Tools allow people to do certain things more economically than they otherwise could, and they often improve the quality of the result Indeed, some tools allow people to do things that would otherwise be impossible For these reasons, individuals and societies are willing to put in the time and effort needed to develop, learn about, and use tools It’s easy to learn to use a television... the couch to change the channel Writing is harder to learn, but the effort returns much more When a tool is difficult to learn and use, additional tools may be developed as aids, such as dictionaries in the case of writing The design, learning, and use of tools are influenced by people’s tendency to satisfice (from a blend of satisfy and suffice; Simon, 1957): to do the least they can in order to attain... Assume Too Muchâ•… 314 13.3.5╇ Teach Teachers as Well as Children •… 314 13.3.6╇ It’s Just Orthographyâ•… 315 13.4╇ Assessing Children s Spellingâ•… 316 13.5╇ Differences Between Children •… 317 13.6╇Final Words •… 317 Referencesâ•… 319 Author Indexâ•… 363 Subject Indexâ•… 379 xâ•…â•› |â•…Contents Preface T he goal of this book is to examine how children learn to use writing systems To do . h0" alt="" How Children Learn to Write Words 1 How Children Learn to Write Words      3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It. book is to examine how children learn to use writing systems. To do so, we must understand the nature of writing systems themselves and the nature of human learning. Thus, after an introductory. this book is to examine what types of writing systems exist in modern societies and how children learn to use these systems for pur- poses of production. We discuss how children learn about such