A Pilot Study Exploring Elementary School-Aged Children's Knowledge of the Syntactic and Prosodic Functions of Punctuation.
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| Title: | A Pilot Study Exploring Elementary School-Aged Children's Knowledge of the Syntactic and Prosodic Functions of Punctuation. |
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| Authors: | Ardanouy, Estelle1 (AUTHOR) estelle.ardanouy@unige.ch, Ryken, Alexandra2 (AUTHOR), Deacon, S. Hélène2 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Reading Psychology. Nov/Dec2025, Vol. 46 Issue 8, p868-885. 18p. |
| Subject Terms: | *School children, *Academic achievement, *Intonation (Phonetics), *Reading comprehension, *Age groups, Punctuation, Pilot projects, Semantics (Philosophy) |
| Abstract: | Learning when and where to add punctuation is key to both skilled writing and fluent reading. We report on a pilot study explore why this is the case, exploring children's and adults' knowledge of the two functions of punctuation: syntactic and prosodic. There were five participant groups: children in Grades 2-3, Grades 4-5, Grades 6-7, Grades 8-9 and adults (n = 151). Participants chose which of six symbols, four of which were punctuation marks, served a given function. They did so for each of the two functions (i.e., syntactic or prosodic) of three punctuation marks (i.e., comma, period, question mark). An ANOVA contrasted performance on the two functions (syntactic or prosodic) across the five age groups. There were significant main effects of Group and of Function, with performance on the task increasing with grade group and higher scores on questions about syntactic than prosodic functions. There was also a significant interaction between the two factors; post-hoc analyses revealed stronger performance on syntactic than prosodic functions for all of groups of children, with similar performance on the two functions in adulthood. We discuss the implications of these findings for more comprehensive models of reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Education Research Complete |
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| Abstract: | Learning when and where to add punctuation is key to both skilled writing and fluent reading. We report on a pilot study explore why this is the case, exploring children's and adults' knowledge of the two functions of punctuation: syntactic and prosodic. There were five participant groups: children in Grades 2-3, Grades 4-5, Grades 6-7, Grades 8-9 and adults (n = 151). Participants chose which of six symbols, four of which were punctuation marks, served a given function. They did so for each of the two functions (i.e., syntactic or prosodic) of three punctuation marks (i.e., comma, period, question mark). An ANOVA contrasted performance on the two functions (syntactic or prosodic) across the five age groups. There were significant main effects of Group and of Function, with performance on the task increasing with grade group and higher scores on questions about syntactic than prosodic functions. There was also a significant interaction between the two factors; post-hoc analyses revealed stronger performance on syntactic than prosodic functions for all of groups of children, with similar performance on the two functions in adulthood. We discuss the implications of these findings for more comprehensive models of reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| ISSN: | 02702711 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/02702711.2025.2523045 |
