Stages of Writing Development

If you like to write, you must probably have been writing for a long time. Like every other skill, writing, too, needs regular practice and polishing. You cannot suddenly decide one day that you want to be a writer and start writing. People who write well tend to write and storytelling quite early in life. If you want to know whether your child can be a writer, it is essential to understand the writing development stages. Once you can understand the different locations, you would point a writer from miles away. So dive into the article to know about the development process of writing skills. 

Stages of writing development

Like all other bodily processes, writing development takes place gradually. Skills are not like switches which you can turn on when you wish. It is not like your body thinks, “Oh, I am 5 years old today, so I should write a story today.” There is a gradual process for the development of a skill. You can read various essays on child development to understand how evolution works. There are a plethora of essay examples that would help you to understand and learn about various other related topics and add to your knowledge. In the upcoming sections, we talk in detail about the different stages of writing development. Remember that these stages develop gradually, and there is no fixed time for them to appear.

Audio storytelling

This is the earliest stage of creative writing: speaking. Kids who have a flair for writing would be good with words. Such kids start telling stories and narratives from a very young age, even before writing. If you record these storytelling sessions, they can form an essential part of the further development of your child. Once they grow up, they can listen to these audio clips and decide what they want to change in their narrative styles.

Early Emergent Writing

This is the initial form of writing where kids start to scribble. Scribbling can take the form of drawing or doodles or trying to copy words from newspapers or books. At this stage, the writing is hardly coherent. But it is an essential step towards writing. If you stop a kid from scribbling at this stage, they might not want to write in later stages of life. This is the best stage for a child to learn the alphabet since they would scribble the alphabet too and grasp the language better. Reading out the alphabet aloud would help them connect the letters to the sounds they make. 

Emergent Writing

Gradually, the scribbles turn into words. By the time children reach this stage, they can connect the sound to the letter. So if you ask them to spell a word, they might be able to get some of the notes right. They might combine reading and writing and better understand the language and its functioning. The more they read, the more they would be exposed to the various nuances of language. So encourage your child to read multiple books at this level.

Transitional Writing

This stage gradually develops from the previous one. The child still does not completely understand the language but understands punctuation and capital letters. They might start incorporating it into their writing. Their hearing-writing skills would improve further, becoming better at spelling. If they read a lot, they would be able to identify sooner that the same letters might sound different depending on where they are used. This would make them pay more attention to these changes, making them more aware. They might come up with mnemonic tricks to remember what a letter sounds like in different situations.

Fluent Writing

This is the writing stage as adults know it. This is the longest stage of development and may take place over several years, mainly during education. As a student, the child learns a lot and tries to emulate all that in their writing. This process continues even when studying in a college or a university. This is when children develop different writing styles and improve their narration styles. By this time, they created a rich vocabulary and can correctly spell 75% of the words they hear. It is impossible to know all the words in the language, but they can increase their vocabulary daily. 

Conclusion

As is pretty clear from the article itself, writing is a skill that develops over time. If a kid has been blessed with the craft of writing, they must dedicate regular time to it and nurture their talent. Not everyone can be a writer, and the differences emerge from whether you harness your skill or not. To write well, you need to put in a lot of hard work, because as they say, “Practice makes a man perfect”. Moreover, every individual has a different writing process, and what appeals to one might not work for another. So everyone needs to go on a journey of self-discovery to learn what facilitates their writing and what obstructs it. All in all, it is not a skill that develops overnight, so keep on working hard!