Early childhood development is one of the most significant stages in an individual’s life. The word recognition stage is an important aspect of one’s early childhood development process. The word recognition stage is the stage in early childhood where most children learn how to speak and read simple words (Karageorgos et al., 2020). At this stage, a child learns more about specific sounds from different alphabets and how sounds from the alphabet are used to form words. Word recognition begins when a child can construct words from alphabetic sounds. Word recognition development is important in a child’s life since it enables children to communicate effectively (Karageorgos et al., 2020). This paper highlights some of the major concepts related to word recognition development.
There are four main stages of word recognition development that enable a child to be fluent in verbal communication. The first stage is the pre-alphabetic stage, which begins at two years of age (Clayton et al., 2019). At this stage, the child begins to understand that sounds come from alphabets or letters. However, in the pre-alphabetic stage, the child still does not understand that words come from specific letter combinations. The second stage is the Partial-Alphabetic stage, which begins at four years of age (Clayton et al., 2019). At this stage, the child is able to comprehend the sound that belongs to every letter.
The third stage is the Full-Alphabetic stage, which begins at five years of age. At this point, the child can recite all the vowels and is fluent in sounding out various words (Clayton et al., 2019). The fourth stage is the consolidated alphabetic phase, which begins when a child hits the eight years of age mark (Clayton et al., 2019). Children at this stage comprehend automatically in sounding and reading abilities since they can easily recognize various letter patterns and combinations.
References
Clayton, F. J., West, G., Sears, C., Hulme, C., & Lervåg, A. (2019). A longitudinal study of early reading development: letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness and RAN, but not letter-sound integration, predict variations in reading development. Scientific Studies of Reading, 24(2), 1–17. Web.
Karageorgos, P., Richter, T., Haffmans, M.-B., Schindler, J., & Naumann, J. (2020). The role of word-recognition accuracy in the development of word-recognition speed and reading comprehension in primary school: A longitudinal examination. Cognitive Development, 56, 100949. Web.