Elementary School Children s Decisions A

Written Language & Literacy 13:2 (2010), 258–271. doi 10.1075/wll.13.2.04davissn 1387–6732 / e-issn 1570–6001 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Elementary school children’s decisions about paragraph organization

Amira Dávalos and Mónica AlvaradoSecretaría de Educación del Estado de Querétaro, Mexico / Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico

The main purpose of the present paper is to explore children’s abilities to intro-duce punctuation in Spanish texts. In this context, sixty Mexican elementary school children (ages 8–11) were asked to edit an expository text. The children’s written responses were analyzed from a pragmatic perspective following Nun-berg (1990) and Figueras (2001). The result of this exercise led to some hypoth-eses on the relation between the discursive connectors and punctuation, and also on the semantic criteria that lead children to delimit certain textual units. From the way the children delimited units we observed a tendency to progress from identifying text sentences to defining them with punctuation in expository written discourse. Children differentiated in their use of punctuation, using commas for serial units and upper cases and full stops for text sentences beginning with explicit subjects. Therefore, we follow that explicit subjects might be a key starting point in the development of those criteria that help to differentiate the structures of text sentences and serial units, at least when revising someone else’s text.

Keywords: written language acquisition, spelling conventions, punctuation, text organization

1. Introduction

The aim of this article is to show the most relevant results of our exploratory re-search that has given tentative answers to how children construct knowledge of punctuation when they need to organize expository texts. Learning to punctuate is not a minor task, especially for those who are just starting the process of acquiring writing skills and conventions. The use of punctuation is fundamentally linked to text organization. In order to understand its acquisition, it is necessary to consider

Elementary school children’s decisions about paragraph organization 259

two different aspects related to the use of the punctuation system: the historical development of punctuation (in order to understand the actual structure of the system) and the psychological implications involved in the learning process.

Punctuation is a cultural phenomenon; its origins are more related to speaking than to writing. Early punctuation was principally an aid for reading aloud. In the Greco-Latin antiquity, the introduction of marks in a text was the responsibility of an expert reader and their function was mainly to indicate pauses (Saenger 1997). It was not until around the 9th century A.D. when the use of punctuation changed and word separation was implemented by Irish scribes. To them Latin was a foreign, mainly written or visual language, rather than an oral one (Parkes 1993). The perception of Latin as a primarily written language eventually led to silent reading and to the further development of new graphic conventions (such as a space between words and capital letters), as well as new forms of punctuation to guide the readers’ interpretation. Throughout the thirteenth century and even more pronounced after the invention of printing, these methods of text arrange-ment were further refined.

Punctuation has never been static. Its development has always been linked to the different modalities of reading and writing, to text revision and correction, to the need to restrict the possible interpretations in an increasing community of readers and writers, and to the recursive attempts to delimit meaningful units in a text (Parkes 1993; Saenger 1997; Cavallo & Chartier 1998; Sebastian 2000; and Frenk 2005). Thereby, punctuation has become one of the essential mechanisms of organizing the content of a written text by segmenting it into text processing units. In fact, nowadays, the recognized text units delimited by this system are the result of the analysis of texts and the subsequent use of punctuation in the past (Zamudio 2004).

This resource coexists with other devices in written language such as blank spaces and discursive connectors. Punctuation helps to define the text structure, the discourse, and other text categories such as paragraph, text sentence, text clause, text adjunct, and serial unit (item in a list) (Nunberg 1990; Figueras 2001). These categories do not pre-exist in the text, but are delimited by punctuation as the result of the author’s decision according to the message he wants to transmit to the reader. Therefore, he guides the reader’s interpretation.

It is important to say that there are several punctuation practices that have been defined by different writing traditions related to particular writing expres-sions for the different modern languages, textual typologies, and, even more, knowledge areas. Writers in different contexts have adopted and institutionalized their own conventions around written organization. In the following analysis, we focus only on Mexican Spanish written texts.

260 Amira Dávalos and Mónica Alvarado

Punctuation has also become institutionalized, and it is a priority for all schools in Mexico to teach its use. In Mexican Spanish, the use of punctuation is rather flexible, in other words there is no strict norm as there is for word spelling (Millan 2005). There are only a few compulsory conventions for its usage such as capital letter after full stop, full stop at the end of a text sentence or a paragraph, and comma to divide elements in a list.

However, punctuation is commonly taught at school according to a normative approach. Teachers usually present one punctuation mark at a time and introduce its use through manual-like definitions. The definition is followed by exercises that require adding the missing mark to a list of unrelated text sentences.

Despite the explanations and exercises, teachers complain about the students’ misuse of punctuation when they produce spontaneous texts. Are young chil-dren’s punctuation errors an indicator of their active involvement in the learn-ing process? Do children develop alternative hypotheses to the prescriptive rules? Psychogenetic studies have tried to answer these questions. According to the work of Ferreiro and Teberosky (1979), Vernon (1986), Díaz (1992), Quinteros (1994), Ferreiro, Pontecorvo & García Hidalgo (1996), and Díaz (2000), amongst others, while learning to read and write, children must think about the different system of written language problems and face them in a similar way as former societies have done.

In the learning process, the learner progressively restructures hypotheses on how the system of any written language works. This means that children grad-ually redefine their understanding until they have reached a system that agrees with convention (Ferreiro & Teberosky 1979). Becoming literate means master-ing a language system which is complex and operates on many levels: phonologi-cal, morphological, discursive, graphic, etc. (Olson 2001). Once children acquire the writing system, they start thinking about and exploring other elements of the written language such as punctuation. As a consequence, similar processes under-lie the learning of the different subsystems of written language, as suggested by Luquez (2003) Castedo (2003), and Ferreiro and Kiscautzky (2003).

On the other hand, studies by Ferreiro and Zucchermaglio (1996) and Simone (1996) state that learning to punctuate is a late acquisition. A punctuated text is the result of various trials and attempts that respond to the need to present a text that can be well understood, in other words, that guides the reader’s interpretation. In addition, psycholinguistic studies (Ferreiro & Kriscautzky 2003; Castedo 2003; and Luquez 2003) have shown that children tend to introduce more punctuation when revising a text than when producing one.

There is a limited number of studies on how children use punctuation and/or other graphic organizers, and even fewer whose main point of analysis is the text units that result from children’s introduction of punctuation (Ferreiro &


Pontecorvo 1999). As yet, there are no established units of analysis that allow to identify children’s criteria for delimiting and distributing text segments on the page, even less in the specific case of expository texts. Therefore, this study pro-poses a methodology based on a discursive-pragmatic analysis (Nunberg 1990; Figueras 2001).

Taking this perspective into account, we do not intend to contrast children’s productions with adults’ productions. We are aware that using punctuation leads to text segmentation with specific discursive functions. We are also conscious of the difficulty involved for the novice writer in identifying meaningful units in the text and delimiting them. Therein lays the reason to consider the text units delimited by the children as the focus of analysis. This way we can reconstruct the criteria that guide them through the introduction of punctuation. We are interested in where and why they introduce punctuation when faced with the need to organize a text, and also in which types of text units tend to be more easily identified and delimited.

2. Method

Sixty children who attended 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade (ages 8–11) at state elementa-ry schools in the community of Queretaro City, Mexico, participated in the study: 23 students were in third grade, 16 attended fourth, and 21 were fifth graders.

We chose these age groups to ensure the children could read and write con-ventionally, even though they might make some spelling mistakes. The children were exposed to a written expository text provided on a computer screen. The text had previously been transcribed from a children’s encyclopedia (Mills & Aridjis 2005) and altered in such a way that the children were faced with the need to or-ganize it.

All punctuation marks, upper case letters, and spaces between lines were removed (word spelling was not changed). The resulting text (see Figure 2) was shown to the children, followed by the instruction, “Here is a text without delimita-tions, correct it so that it can be read more easily”. Even though the task was given to each class as a whole, the children read the text individually and silently and intro-duced the modifications that they considered necessary in a session which lasted an average of 45 minutes. Every modification was recorded using using Microsoft Office Word’s tool to track changes.


Rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a deliciousmeal for other animals, for example, the fox.The y move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of theirback legs. They make long jumps to run away.Rabbits have long teeth because they are rodents like hares, mice,squirrels, beavers, etcetera.They feed on vegetables by nibbling them. They feed o n all types ofleaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etcetera.Their bodies are covered by very soft fur of various colors. There arewhite rabbits, black rabbits, grey and ginger rabbits, among othercolors.After a male and a female rabbit mate, baby rabbits are formedinside their mother´s body, for a month, until they are born. Femaleshave y oung several times a year and they have about six rabbits each

Figure 1. Original exposititory text (Spanishand English translation)


3. Results and discussion

We used the clause as the unit of analysis. According to Berman and Slobin (1994), the term clause refers to any unit that contains a unified predicate expressing a unique situation, whether it is an activity, event or state, as, for example, “Rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound”. A combination of clauses either in coor-dination or in subordination creates more complex units called clause packages (Nir-Sagiv 2008). The phrase “Females have young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time” is an example of this type of complex clause.

Additionally, a clause can consist of a complement, for example an explanato-ry text adjunct, which as a syntagmatic unit makes a semi-clause (Nir Sagiv 2008). Such a semi-clause is found at the end of the following clause package: [[[Rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound] [as they are a delicious meal for other ani-mals, [for example, the fox]]].

We found sixteen clauses in the text used in the task. Figure 3 shows these clauses.

All the children used punctuation as a resource to organize the altered text. The general results of mark introduction showed no significant differences be-

los conejos necesitan estar muy atentos a cualquier sonido porque son un delicioso alimento para otros animales por ejemplo el zorro se desplazan saltando con los potentes músculos de sus patas traseras dan grandes saltos para huir con rapidez los conejos tienen dientes grandes porque son roedores como las liebres las lauchas las ardillas los castores etcétera se alimentan de vegetales royéndolos comen toda clase de hojas semillas frutos paja etcétera su cuerpo está recubierto por un pelo muy suave de colores variados hay conejos blancos negros grises y rojizos entre otros después que un conejo y una coneja se aparean los conejitos se forman dentro del cuerpo de su madre durante un mes hasta que nacen las hembras tienen cría varias veces al año y nacen alrededor de seis conejitos por vez cuando los conejitos crecen no se van a otra madriguera por eso la colonia de conejos se puebla cada vez más(the) rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a delicious meal for other ani-mals for example the fox they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of their back legs they make long jumps to run away (the) rabbits have long teeth because they are rodents like hares mice squirrels beavers etcetera they feed on vegetables by nibbling them they feed on all types of leaves seeds fruits hay etcetera their bodies are covered by very soft fur of various col-ors there are white rabbits black rabbits grey and ginger rabbits among other colors after a male and a female rabbit mate baby rabbits are formed inside their mother’s body for a month until they are born (the) females have young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time when the young grow up they do not leave the burrow that is why the colony grows bigger every timeNote: We added the at the beginning of three sentences because in Spanish nouns are often introduced by this definite article.

Figure 2. Altered text (Spanish and English translation)


tween school grades. However, there is a difference in how children used punctua-tion depending on the type of clause and the elements inside them.

3.1 Children’s marking of clause boundaries

Punctuation was introduced most frequently at the boundaries of the text, that is to say children introduced an initial capital letter (95%) and a final full stop (81%) to indicate them.

Within these boundaries, punctuation had a variety of uses. Commas and full stops were the most frequently used marks to delimit a variety of text units: se-rial units, text sentences, and text adjuncts. The ending of the clauses was more marked compared with the beginning of the clauses. At times, this was the result of the type of mark chosen by the children to delimit the clauses. If a comma was used at the end of clause, instead of a full stop, there was no need to start the next clause with a capital letter. However, as we will show later, the introduction of a full stop at the end of a clause did not always lead to the use of an initial capital letter in the subsequent clause.

Our results show that children were sensitive to the dependent relationship between clauses C1-C2, C5-C6, C11-C12 (C12’ included) and C13-C14 where no punctuation is necessary. As a result, no child introduced punctuation between those paired clauses.

C1 rabbits need to be very attentive to any soundC2 as they are a delicious meal for other animals, for example, the foxC3 they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of their back legsC4 they make long jumps to run awayC5 rabbits have long teethC6 because they are rodents like hares, mice, squirrels, beavers, etceteraC7 they feed on vegetables by nibbling themC8 they feed on all types of leaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etceteraC9 their bodies are covered by very soft fur of various colorsC10 there are white rabbits, black rabbits, grey and ginger rabbits, among other colorsC11 after a male and a female rabbit mateC12 baby rabbits are formed inside their mother´s body, for a month,C12’ until they are bornC13 females have young several times a yearC14 and they have about six rabbits each timeC15 when the young grow up,C15’ they do not leave the burrowC16 that is why the colony grows bigger every time

Figure 3. Clauses found in the text


As Figure 4 shows, some clauses inside the text were more marked than oth-ers. Analyzing the beginning of each clause, we can observe that, apart from the first one, clause C5 was the most marked in the text. Clause C5 is shown below together with C4 to illustrate the context of C5´s beginning.

C4 they make long jumps to run away C5 (the) rabbits have long teeth

Many of the children who correctly put a capital letter to indicate the beginning of C5 did so without having marked the end of C4 with a full stop. This indicates the relevance of the expression (the) rabbits in guiding punctuation. On the other hand, there were also cases were the opposite was true: A full stop in the preceding clause was not always followed by a capital letter in C5, leading us to suspect that the article-noun combination facilitates identification of the ending of a preceding clause (in this case C4–60.8% marked).

21

Figure 5. Initial marking of C5 related to non-conventional punctuation in the previous

clause (Sergio, 4th grade)

(The) rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a delicious meal for other

animals. For example the fox they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of

their back legs [they make long jumps to run away], [(The) rabbits have long teeth because

they are rodents like hares mice squirrels beavers etcetera] they feed on vegetables by

nibbling them. They feed on all types of leaves seeds, fruit, hay, etcetera. Their bodies are

covered by very soft fur of various colors there are white rabbits black rabbits grey and

ginger rabbits among other colors. After a male and a female rabbit mate baby rabbits are

formed inside their mother’s body for a month until they are born. (The) females have

young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time when the young grow

up they do not leave the burrow that is why the colony grows bigger every time.

Figure 6. Percentage of clauses marked according to the type of beginning

Figure 4. Marking percentage (beginning and ending) for each clause

(The) rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a delicious meal for other animals. For example the fox they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of their back legs [they make long jumps to run away], [(The) rabbits have long teeth because they are rodents like hares mice squirrels beavers etcetera] they feed on vegetables by nibbling them. They feed on all types of leaves seeds, fruit, hay, etcetera. Their bodies are covered by very soft fur of various colors there are white rabbits black rabbits grey and ginger rabbits among other colors. After a male and a female rabbit mate baby rabbits are formed inside their mother’s body for a month until they are born. (The) females have young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time when the young grow up they do not leave the burrow that is why the colony grows bigger every time.

Figure 5. Initial marking of C5 related to non-conventional punctuation in the previous clause (Sergio, 4th grade)


We can see an example of this in Figure 5. For illustration, a full text is given here; italics and square brackets highlight the clauses under discussion.

This type of marking at the beginning of clause 5 might result from the fact that this is the only clause that starts with the same words — (the) rabbits — as the first line of the text. Thus, the first line may have served as a lexical clue to finding the beginning of a text sentence.

A similar pattern is shown by clauses C12 (C12’ included) and C13:

C12 (C12’ included) baby rabbits are formed inside their mother´s body, for a month, until they are born

C13 (The) females have young several times a year

Even though the children did not introduce a significant amount of punctuation marks at the end of C12’ (11.7%, out of which 5.0% were full stops and the rest were commas), it is interesting to see that the number of initial marking of C13 was higher at 15.0%. We believe that it was the subject (the) females that led the children who introduced capital letters to determine the beginning of the clause.

Clauses 7, 9 and 11 show the influence of list-type endings. All three had punc-tuation marks introduced at the initial boundary by 25.0 % of the children. What is also similar about these clauses is that each of them is subsequent to a clause that includes a list. We show clauses 7, 9 and 11 in their context, together with their preceding clauses, in which we have underlined the lists.

C5 Rabbits have long teeth C6 because they are rodents like hares, mice, squirrels, beavers, etcetera C7Theyfeedonvegetablesbynibblingthem C8 They feed on all types of leaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etcetera C9Theirbodiesarecoveredbyverysoftfurofvariouscolors C10 There are white rabbits, black rabbits, grey and ginger rabbits, among

other colors C11Afteramaleandafemalerabbitmate

The initial marking of these clauses was very low compared to that of closing the previous clause. Table 1 shows this difference between average punctuation in contiguous pairs of clauses.

Table 1. Difference between values in marking in contiguous pairs of clauses

Punctuation at the end of the clause Capital letter at the beginning of the clause

C6 = 51.7% C7 = 25.0%

C8 = 58.3% C9 = 25.0%

C10 = 31.7% C11 = 25.0%


Regarding clauses 6, 8 and 10 which precede the ones we are analyzing, we find that C6 and C8 share the same ending of a list: etcetera. This word leads to a higher val-ue of punctuation than the other list-ending among other colors (C10). Considering the children’s success in delimiting the ending of the serial lists, we were surprised at the low average of initial marking for the clauses which followed. It appears that although lists are very strong indicators for delimiting the ending of clauses, they

do not always lead to a successful identification of the start of the next clause.

22

Figure 7. Percentage of clauses marked according to the type of ending

Figure 8. Percentage of insertion of commas in clauses, according to the syntagmatic unit

Figure 6. Percentage of clauses marked according to the type of beginning

22





Both patterns described above led us to review the data according to the type of beginning and ending of each one of the independent clauses, i.e. clauses that express unique situations and clause packages. Figures 6 and 7 show the results of this review.

It seems that out of the variety of phrases that express beginnings, those con-taining an explicit subject (represented by a noun) were the strongest lexical aids to identify points of initial marking. When it comes to endings, it was those phras-es related to the ends of lists which led to the most punctuation marks.

3.2 Children’s use of punctuation inside clauses

As we mentioned before, clause packages can include semi-clauses. Out of the sixteen clauses that we identified in the text, five have semi-clauses integrated by serial units (C6, C8 and C10) and explanatory adjuncts (C2, C12-C12’).

C6 because they are rodents like hares, mice, squirrels, beavers, etcetera C8 they feed on all types of leaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etcetera C10 there are white rabbits, black rabbits, grey and ginger rabbits, among other

colors C2 as they are a delicious meal for other animals, for example, the fox C12 (C12’ included) baby rabbits are formed inside their mother´s body for a

month, until they are born

The use of the comma to separate serial units could be observed for every single the participant. This means that no matter which grade the student belonged to, every child could identify serial units in the lists provided in the text and delimit them by using commas to separate them. When it came to text adjuncts, children who marked these units used commas, semi-colons, or colons.

In order to compare the children’s success in introducing commas into serial units with their success in putting commas in front of text adjuncts, we calculated the percentage of marking per ‘mark-opportunity’, to remove any bias caused by the serial units having more opportunities per clause (for example: four mark-opportunities in C6 compared with two in C2).

As can be seen in Figure 8, while the children on average inserted less than 5.4% of the available commas in front of the explanatory adjuncts, they scored 58.9% with serial units. The resulting text from Saul (4th grade) is an example to show how children tended to use commas related to serial units. A careful analysis of Saul’s use of commas reveals a systematic application only to those serial units that belong to the three different lists that appear in the text. The underlined lists below highlight Saul’s punctuation:


Even though children introduced a high percentage of commas in-between serial units, the amount of commas was not equally distributed within the list. Punctuation tended to decrease for the last element placed before the closing end-of-list (etcetera for clauses C6 and C8) and among other colors for C10. The mean percentage introduction of commas for the first three elements in the list was 65.0%, 75.0%, and 57.2% for Clauses 6,8 and 10 respectively, whereas the per-centage marking of the fourth and final element was 51.7%, 51.7% again, and 8.3% for the same clauses.Text adjuncts received very little punctuation. Those who did introduce marks in this type of unit did it in C2 to delimit the initial boundary of the discursive connector for example.

23

Figure 9. Saul’s (4th grade) modifications to the altered text

(The) rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a delicious meal for other

animals for example the fox they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of

their back legs they make long jumps to run away. (The) rabbits have long teeth because

they are rodents like hares, mice, squirrels, beavers, etcetera. they feed on vegetables by

nibbling them they feed on all types of leaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etcetera. their bodies are

covered by very soft fur of various colors there are white rabbits, black rabbits, grey and

ginger rabbits among other colors after a male and a female rabbit mate baby rabbits are

formed inside their mother’s body for a month until they are born. (The) females have

young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time when the young grow

up they do not leave the burrow that is why the colony grows bigger every time.

Table 1. Difference between values in marking in contiguous pairs of clauses

Punctuation at the end of the clause

Capital letter at the beginning of the clause


(The) rabbits need to be very attentive to any sound as they are a delicious meal for other animals for example the fox they move around by hopping with the powerful muscles of their back legs they make long jumps to run away. (The) rabbits have long teeth because they are rodents like hares, mice, squirrels, beavers, etcetera. they feed on vegetables by nibbling them they feed on all types of leaves, seeds, fruits, hay, etcetera. their bodies are covered by very soft fur of various colors there are white rabbits, black rabbits, grey and ginger rabbits among other colors after a male and a female rabbit mate baby rabbits are formed inside their mother’s body for a month until they are born. (The) females have young several times a year and they have about six rabbits each time when the young grow up they do not leave the burrow that is why the colony grows bigger every time.

Figure 9. Saul’s (4th grade) modifications to the altered text


4. Final remarks

An important outcome of this study is the fact that when revising a text, it can be assumed that in the initial stages of punctuation acquisition, there are lexical marks that work as key words or phrases to facilitate the introduction of punctua-tion at the beginning or the ending of a clause.

Some lexical marks are stronger than others. In this study the presence of the combination article-noun was a strong clue for kids to identify initial limits; etcet-era was the strongest hint when it came to endings.

Results from our revision task corroborate Ferreiro and Pontecorvo’s (1999) data about how, in narratives, punctuation marks tend to appear within those ele-ments that belong to a list of the same grammatical category (nouns, adjectives, etc.). Our results show that this is also the case in expository writing.

It is remarkable how well children use the conventional mark of the comma when it comes to delimiting serial units within a clause, particularly a list. The non-conventional uses of punctuation (colon, semi-colon, comma, and full stop) between and within clause packages indicate the fundamental complexity in the rules governing when to use these marks. However, the presence of punctuation marks, whether correctly applied or not, in every single text shows that children rise to the challenge of analyzing written language and organizing it.

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Authors’ addresses

Amira DávalosSecretaría de Educación del Estado de Querétaro, MexicoCalle del Pozo, 13. Fracc. Villas del SolTequisqiapan, Querétaro.MéxicoCP 76750

[email protected]

Mónica AlvaradoUniversidad Autónoma de Querétaro, MexicoProl. Tecnológico 67 Col. La PiedadQuerétaro, Qro.MéxicoCP 76150

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Elementary School Children s Decisions A