Levels of literacy: what are they, stages and characteristics?

These are the levels of reading and writing into which we can divide child development.

Learning to read and write involves several stages in which children become familiar with letters and their sounds, as well as understanding notions such as that long words are written with more letters and short words with fewer.

The levels of literacy are a series of stages that every child goes through when learning to read and write. They were originally studied by the Argentine psychologist Emilia Ferreiro and, below, we will scale each of these stages to understand how literacy is acquired.

What are the levels of literacy?

The levels of literacy are the different stages that children go through during the process of learning to read and write.. These levels were first studied by Emilia Ferreiro, Argentine psychologist, writer and pedagogue, who presented them in her work "Los sistemas de escritura en el desarrollo del niño" (1979). The levels of writing and reading are interrelated but, although they are similar, they imply different levels of improvement.

Generally, it is common to distinguish four stages through which children pass when learning to write, being the concrete, presyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic phases. On the other hand, the process of reading acquisition involves three phases, presyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic.

The study of these levels of reading and writing enables professionals to to detect problems in the cognitive development of children to see if there are any delays in the acquisition of certain components of reading and writing.

The reading levels

As we have discussed children go through three stages when they are acquiring the ability to readthat is, the ability to interpret written texts: presyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic. Each of these stages is characterized by the presence or absence of two fundamental aspects in understanding how words are read and comprehending written texts: qualitative and quantitative.

• Qualitative: refers to the phonetic content of the word, which letters make up the word and in what order they appear.
• Quantitative: refers to the number of letters that make up the word and whether the word is long or short.

During the presyllabic stage of reading, children do not master either of these two aspects. However, when they manage to internalize the quantitative aspect, they advance to the syllabic stage and, once the qualitative aspect is also acquired, they reach the alphabetic stage.

1. Pre-syllabic stage

The first level of reading is the presyllabic stage. In this stage, if the child is asked to interpret the meaning of a word or a written text, he/she will not be able to read it at all.. This is due to the fact that neither the quantitative nor the qualitative aspect of reading is mastered, so the infant will invent the meaning of what is written or, directly, will say that what is written there does not mean anything.

As far as can be seen, at this stage the main component that infants use when "reading" is their imagination, interpreting the written words in a totally arbitrary and even fanciful way..

For example, we may come across explanations such as long words are names of large objects, while short words are names of small objects. For some words this idea may work for them (e.g., toad vs. building) but not so much for others (e.g., ant vs. square).

2. Syllabic stage

The syllabic stage is the second stage of the reading acquisition process and is reached when the child has internalized the quantitative aspect. From this moment on, the infant is already able to differentiate mainly the size of the written word.. However, since the child does not yet understand the meaning of the individual letters, i.e., has not yet mastered the qualitative aspect of reading.

So we have a point at which the infant knows that long words are represented in written form by words with many letters, while short words have fewer letters, but since he does not know how to pronounce each letter, what he does is to say words that seem to him to have the same length.

For example, if he sees the word "building" written, he may tell us that it means such unrelated but familiar things as "apricot", "bird" or "bus", whereas something similar would happen with shorter words.

What differentiates this level from the first one is that in the syllabic stage the child makes an effort to read the word, using the finger to guide him or her as he or she tries to read. Thus, the intention to interpret the written text rather than simply making up the meaning appears for the first time.

3. Alphabetic stage

The alphabetic stage of reading is reached once the infant masters the qualitative aspect, i.e. is able to distinguish the different letters from each other and interpret their sounds.. In this way the child tries to actually read what is written there. It is only a matter of time before the infant acquires real reading ability from this point on.

The levels of writing

The levels of writing are almost the same as those found in reading, except that there is a pre-syllabic stage. The challenges that children face on the road to writing acquisition are very similar to those of reading, but not identical, which is why we find some differences. Thus, there are four levels of writing: concrete, presyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic.

1. Concrete stage

The concrete stage of writing is one in which the infant is not yet able to understand the basics of how writing works and the shape of letters. Even so, he or she may want to start writing by imitating adults, may want to start writing by imitating adults, scribbling on a sheet of paperHe may still want to begin writing by imitating adults, scribbling on a piece of paper as if he were actually writing.

2. Presyllabic stage

Children reach the presyllabic stage of writing when they have managed to write some letters, although they do not yet know very well what their meaning is.

At this point is able to understand that each of the letters of the alphabet represents a different sound, and will try to express it in writing.and will try to capture it with their peculiar writing.

He will try to demonstrate his knowledge of the alphabet by using different combinations of the letters he has acquired to represent different words, even though he does not yet know what each letter means. He will write randomly, and may use a single letter to represent even syllables or whole words.

3. Syllabic stage

In the syllabic stage, the child does not yet fully know the sound that each letter represents, but tries to deduce it by using the letters he already knows to represent specific syllables. For example, he may think that the letter "m" is always read as the syllable "me", and the letter "b" is always read as "be", and so forth..

At this stage of the acquisition of writing it can be observed that the infant is able to divide words into syllables and make a somewhat approximate writing of them, although he/she has not yet mastered the relationship between the written letters and the phonemes he/she wants to represent on the sheet of paper.

4. Alphabetic stage

Finally, we have the alphabetic stage of writing. This final stage of reading and writing is reached when the child discovers which sound or sounds represent each of the letters of the alphabet and acquires the ability to combine them in an appropriate manner.. From this moment on, the infant no longer has major problems with reading and writing.

It is true that, due to age and lack of practice, the child may be a little slow in reading and writing, but the point is that he/she knows how to read and write. The only problems you will have at this point will be spelling, having to perfect your handwriting to have good handwriting, and also intonation, prosody and speed when reading aloud.