Why Kids Struggle With Capitalisation: Insights From New Child Development Research

A recent research conducted on English-speaking children reveals that even after passing early grades, they struggle with capitalisation skills. Overall, two studies found that children from grades 3-6 make more errors compared to older students. They are mainly dependent on “two clues”, proper nouns at the start of a sentence. Though mastery is showcased by adults however they also make unnecessary capitalisation occasionally. It is suggestive through findings that revisiting capitalisation rules and understanding the sentence-level writing would strengthen accuracy. 

Research Details 

Currently, the writing system is used by more than one-third of the world’s population. This includes both uppercase and lowercase letter forms. The capitalisation refers to the use of uppercase letters. For the seller to identify capitalisation, they have to learn to recognise two clues: one word’s type (proper nouns) and sentence position (start of sentence). Thus, activities that draw children’s attention to the word’s role in a sentence could be helpful. 

The two research studies took place at University of Tasmania in Australia to find if there are certain writing patterns that facilitate students to gain capitalisation skills correctly. The research has been funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program. The research has been published in a new Child Development Article, “Capital Gains: Effects of Word Class and Sentence Position on Capitalisation Use Across Age”. Written by authors Ms Emilia Hawkey, Dr Matthew A. Palmer and Dr Nenagh Kemp from the University of Tasmania in Australia. 

The research participants were 236 English-speaking students from southeastern Australia in Grades 3-6, 7-12, and at the post-secondary level. 95 per cent of participants were white, mostly white. During the analysis, participants were given some pre-written sentences with a word missing (either one word missing at a time or several missing words in a row). These were 40 test words so that students don’t lose their focus. For instance, a sentence was read aloud by researchers, “Tom likes to play tennis”; the participants were required to fill in words such as “Tom”, “tennis”, or “Tom likes”.

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Research Findings 

The research found that words with two clues are capitalised more than words with one clue, which is more than words with no capitalisation clue, such as capitalisation in the middle of the sentence. One of the gaps that the research highlights is that the capitalisation rules are taught but never revisited in later school years. There is little understanding, as per research, on how capitalisation skills progress with age or how adults maintain their skills. 

Through the responses, it was found that for the most part, adolescents and adults are skilled at capitalising even with one clue given; however, there were times when they capitalised unnecessarily. Grade 3-6 students make more errors, but when their attention is drawn to sentences, they capitalise better. 

The following activities are helpful for children to encourage them to use capital letters –

1. Bringing their focus to the word’s role in a sentence. 
2. Teachers can ask students to think about the position and meaning of the words in a sentence rather than just how the word is spelt. 
3. Brief and intentional reminders about the rules over a period of time seem to be helpful for students.
4. Parents can contribute to the students’ learning by pointing out the start-of-sentence and proper-noun clues in everyday activities.

Major Findings 

1. Children continue to master gradually in developing capitalisation skills through reading and exposure beyond grade 2. 
2. When sentence position and word type signal capitalisation, these two become clues through which students can capitalise more accurately. 
3. Emphasising sentence meaning and structure to understand the practical implications of capitalisation by teachers is essential. 

Authors Perspective 

In a conversation with the research authors, the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) found the following information – 

1. Though capitalisation rules in English seem to be very simple, and it’s easy for us to assume that children and adults use them alike. However, the study suggests that grade 3-6 students do not use capitalisation as efficiently as adults.
2. The capitalisation clues are picked gradually as they get exposed to reading. 
3. To be able to apply capitalisation rules, the prerequisites are understanding what is properly known and having an awareness of sentence structure. 
4. Rules may seem simple because the difficulties faced by young spellers are often underdetermined. 

Research Limitation 

As there were only 40 test words to write, that is a relatively small number; thus, research generalisation needs to be done carefully. Also, if students are given naturalistic writing, the result may alter completely, such as they could perform better because of familiar words or lower, as they have to decide what they want to write. 

Future Research 

The authors shared that future research could consider understanding how people spell words that exist in both forms. For instance, Daisy could be a name, and daisy is a flower as well. 

Reference +

https://neurosciencenews.com/literacy-learning-capital-letters-29885/