Abstract

VERNON, Sofía A.  and  ALVARADO, Mónica. The Development of Graphic Accentuation among Mexican Children and Teenagers. RMIE [online]. 2013, vol.18, n.56, pp.141-157. ISSN 1405-6666.

This study has two main objectives: 1) to explore what elementary and secondary school students know about accentuation (oral) and the graphic accentuation of words in Spanish, and 2) to compare students from public and private schools in terms of this knowledge. The sample consisted of 551 students from the third to the ninth grades, who were give three tasks that involved indentifying the accen-ted part of words. The results suggest that awareness of the location of accents is attained gradually through school, and that such metalinguistic awareness occurs by means of reflection based on writing. The results also show great inequality in the performance of children and teenagers from public and private schools.

Keywords : development of language; elementary education; teaching Spanish; written language; educational equality.

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