Browsing by Author "Gibbons, Diana E"

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    Basic spelling competence in adults
    (University of Calgary, 1980-05) O'Grady, William D; Gibbons, Diana E
    There is virtually complete agreement among competent researchers that the development of linguistic knowledge in human beings is dependent upon the complex interplay of two factors: the learner's inborn capacities and the linguistic environment. Because it is not possible to directly observe the nature of the learner's mental capacities, there has been a great deal of controversy over the exact role that they play in the language acquisition process. Forced as we are to make complicated inferences about the type of language acquisition mechanisms that a child needs for success in the linguistic environment, there will probably always remain serious disagreements over the precise contribution which properties of human nature make to the acquisition of language.
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    Graphic competence
    (University of Calgary, 1983-06) Gibbons, Diana E
    The invented spellings of pre-schoolers first described and analyzed by Read (1971) are significant in more than one respect. First, they are completely spontaneous and entirely free from the effects of instruction. The children who produce invented spellings know the names of the conventional symbols and how to form them, but they have virtually no direct knowledge of any conventional sound-grapheme correspondences and cannot read. Second, the spellings do not vary qualitatively from child to child. Thirdly, as previously mentioned, these children have not yet learned to read (hence the use of the term 'preliterate').