Vom BLISS-Symbol zur alphabetischen Schrift : Entwicklung und Erprobung eines vorschulischen Förderansatzes zur Prävention von Lernschwierigkeiten beim Schriftspracherwerb

Many children fail in beginning reading and spelling instruction. Research over the last years has focused on phonological awareness as the main prerequisite for the acquisition of literacy. The role of experiences in traditional orthography and other graphic representational forms before school entry has been neglected. Therefore our research team at Siegen University started a project in 1997. The basis for this dissertation is not an efficacy but an exploratory study. The data analysis focuses on comparisons between the intervention groups and between subgroups as well as on the development of individual children over a period of 18 months. The investigation has been designed as a quasi-experimental field study with three different types of intervention (introduction to Bliss as a logographic symbol system vs. introduction to alphabetic writing vs. phonological training without reference to alphabetic writing) plus control groups. The main goal was to find out whether experience with graphic symbols can enhance the chances for success in reading and spelling instruction, moreover, whether children with limited experience of alphabetic writing benefit from experiences with Bliss symbols prior to their school entrance. 179 preschool children half a year before school entrance participated in four waves of the interventions and 637 children in various control groups. During the first two years the treatments took place in two kindergartens, during year three and four in several "Schulkindergarten"-groups. Complete data sets from 140 children, i. e. pre- and posttests before and after the treatment plus three follow-up-tests during the first year at school have been analyzed.
Specific effects restricted to the specific treatments could be found within all three intervention groups. In contrast, none of the training groups showed superior reading or spelling results at the end of first grade. However, the starting conditions of the Bliss group prior to school entrance were less favourable. Therefore one could interpret a comparable level of achievement at the end of grade 1 as a slight advantage for the Bliss approach. Focusing on the subgroup of children within the lowest quartile (in terms of their early literacy competence), a noticeable difference between the Bliss group and the other groups could be found. Here, the children having participated in the Bliss intervention showed the best results in the word spelling and reading tasks at the end of the first school year.
One important conclusion from the project evidence is the suggestion to increase efforts to promote early literacy within preschool settings. Besides phonological training it is possible and worthwhile for preschool settings in Germany to give young children a wider range of options for discovering letters, words, graphic symbols and other forms of written language before entering school.
Keywords: Emergent Literacy, Blissymbols, Graphic Symbols, Phonological Awareness, Reading and Spelling, Learning Difficulties, Prevention.

This research study has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and supported by the Ministry of Youth, School and Children of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.