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Milena Lipnická, Matej Bel University, Slovak RepublicAbstract
This study focuses on analyzing letter writing in preschool-aged children, with an emphasis on gender differences and the relationship between letter formation and the ability to write one’s own name. The research was conducted with the aim of supporting the achievement of performance standards in letter recognition. The theoretical basis is the concept of emergent literacy, according to which knowledge of letters is a significant predictor of later reading and writing skills. The study had a quantitative design. The research sample consisted of 199 children aged 3 to 6 years attending kindergartens in Slovakia. Data were collected using an early writing test and analyzed via quantitative content analysis. The results showed that children most frequently produced the letters A, O, I, M, N, K, E, while letters such as X, W, Q, Y occurred rarely. These findings highlight the importance of graphomotor simplicity and the frequency of letter occurrence in the linguistic environment. A key finding is the statistically significant difference between children capable of writing their names and those who lack this ability. Children who wrote their names achieved a higher average number of written letters compared to the others. The results suggest that writing one’s own name can serve as an indicator of the level of pre-reading skills. The study contributes to our understanding of the early development of written language in the Slovak context and has practical implications for educational assessment. A limitation is the quantitative approach and sample size; future research should also consider qualitative aspects of writing.
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Conference: ECAH2026Stream: Humanities - Knowledge
This paper is part of the ECAH2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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