Language development

"Reading and writing are quite distinct from a knowledge of the letters of the alphabet. They really come into existence when a word rather than a graphic symbol becomes a fixed element."
The Discovery of the Child p 215, Chap 15

Montessori recognised that a child actually goes through two sensitive periods for language development: one is the periods from birth to about five years old, the other is from the age of about seven to nine years.

The first period is concerned with the more sensorial aspects and moves from the uttering and repetition of simple sounds, through the crucial understanding that everything has its own name, into an increasing interest in the elements of sound and shape, and ultimately moving on to abilities of writing, reading and increasing explorations into the communication of meaning.

The second involves a fascination with construction i.e. grammar. She saw that the young child has extraordinary abilities during the first period and that this special sensitivity resulted in each one being able to master the intricacies of his or her own language with an ease that could never again be replicated.

Any obstacles to the childÕs natural language development at this time could cause damage that would continue into adulthood. As with all aspects of her work, she watched very carefully what it was that the activities of the children were showing her before she moved on to specifically assist this development.

Hence it was that the children showed her that, in order to write, the muscular mechanisms of the hand needed to be perfected through indirect exercises, that writing came easily whereas reading involved more elaborate mental activities and that, contrary to opinion of the time, such young children had a natural disposition to acquire such abilities.

She started off looking at the materials developed by Seguin, but ultimately came up with her own improved versions. She created the first sandpaper letters by chance as she could not afford to have them made, and then discovered that the roughly made versions were far superior. "If I had been rich I would have forever used this elegant but sterile alphabet of the past." (The Discovery of the Child p 200, Chap 14).

She discovered that the children had the ability to construct words with letters before they could write or read and was astonished to find that they suddenly developed the ability to write spontaneously. "This was the greatest event to take place in the ChildrenÕs House... We were struck as if we had witnessed a miracle." (The Secret of Childhood p 132, Chap 19.)

Reading, she found occurred later and only when the child had made the connection with the written word.

As in other areas of her work Montessori had not expected the children to demonstrate such extraordinary natural abilities.

What she saw made her question the whole assumption that abilities always increased according to age and furthered her interest in investigating the "sensitive periods".

"These two powers of the mind (imagination and abstraction) which go beyond the simple perception of things actually present, play a mutual part in the construction of the mind's content. Both are necessary for the building up of language.

A precise alphabet, on the one hand, and grammatical rules on the other, permit an indefinite accumulation of the wealth of words. For words, if they are to be utilized and enrich the language, must be capable of taking their place in the groundwork of sounds and of grammatical order. And what happens in the construction of a language happens also in the construction of the mind."
The Absorbent Mind p 168, Chap 17

Quotations

"...after the moveable letter had been placed over the corresponding letter drawn on the cards, I had the children trace the letters repeatedly as if they were writing them... In this way the children succeeded in mastering the movements necessary for reproducing the shapes of the letters without actually writing them. I was then struck by an idea that had never before entered my mind, namely, that two different kinds of movement are used in writing. Besides the motion for reproducing the shape of the letter, there is also that of handling the writing instrument."
The Discovery of the Child p 196, Chap 14

"A child who looks at, recognizes, and touches the letters as if he were writing is prepared at one and the same time for reading and writing."
Ibid p 198, Chap 14

"Touching the letters and looking at them at the same time fixes their images more quickly because of the cooperation of the senses. Later the two will be separated: seeing will be employed in reading and touching in writing. According to their different types, some learn how to read first and others how to write."
Ibid p 198, Chap 14

"Writing... is very easy in childhood. It is not so with reading, which demands an extensive period of instruction and requires a higher intellectual development, since it involves interpreting the signs and modulating the voice in order to understand the meaning of a word; and all this requires purely mental work."
Ibid p 199, Chap 14

"Writing is a complex act which needs to be analyzed. One part of it has reference to motor mechanisms and the other represents a real and proper effort of the intellect."
Ibid p 203, Chap 15

"...in our system little children acquire a hand which is practiced and ready to write... They are unconsciously preparing themselves for writing when in the course of the sense exercises they move the hand in various directions, constantly repeating the same actions though with different ends in view."
Ibid p 205, Chap 15

"A great many of the defects which remain permanently in the adult are due to functional errors in the development of speech during the time of childhood. If, instead of correcting the speech of adolescents, we substituted guidance in its development in childhood, we would accomplish a most useful preventative work."
Ibid p 214, Chap 15

"...with this method, the teaching of reading is begun simultaneously with that of writing."
Ibid p 215, Chap 15

"When he sees and recognises, he reads; when he touches, he writes."
Ibid p 215, Chap 15

"We should not worry as to whether a child in the course of his development learns first to read or to write, or which of the two will be the easier for him. We must learn this from experience without any preconceptions, waiting for the individual differences that will make one prevail over the other."
Ibid p 215, Chap 15

"...it is certain that if our method is applied at the normal age, that is, before the age of five, a little child will write before he reads, whereas a child who is already too far developed (five or six years) will read first, experiencing difficulties in adjusting his clumsy mechanisms."
Ibid p 215, Chap 15

"It is much more fascinating at the beginning to create words from letters of the alphabet than to read them, and it is also much easier than writing them since writing involves the additional labor of mechanisms not yet fixed."
Ibid p 216, Chap 15

"Once interest has been aroused, that is, when the children grasp the principle that each sound of the spoken language can be represented by a symbol, they advance on their own... A teacher finds that her position has changed. She no longer instructs but simply tends to a child's needs. Indeed many children are convinced that they have learned to write by themselves."
Ibid p 218, Chap 15

"Older children will not perhaps have the same keen interest in analyzing words or the same delight in seeing them translated into letters in a row... This can only be explained by the fact that a child of four is still in a formative period of his own psychic development."
Ibid p 218, Chap 15

"Another great source of surprise was that the children composed entire words as soon as they heard them spoken clearly and without needing to have the sounds repeated."
Ibid p 218, Chap 15

"It was not simply a single child but rather many who showed this same surprising ability. They obviously had a special sensitivity for words and were ravenous in their desire to master the written language."
Ibid p 220, Chap 15

"The children who composed words in this manner did not know how to read and write. They were not, indeed, interested in written words."
Id p 220, Chap 15

"And since this preparation is not partial but complete, that is, a child can perform all the movements necessary for writing, written speech does not develop gradually but explosively, that is, a child can write any word he is given."
Id p 222, Chap 15

"Thus it was that we shared in the moving experience of the first developments of writing among our children. During those days we were deeply touched; we felt as if we were living in a dream or had assisted at some miraculous events."
Ibid p 222, Chap 15

"A child who wrote a word for the first time was filled with a great joy... Indeed no one could escape the noisy demonstration of a child. He would keep calling all to see what he had done."
Ibid p 222, Chap 15

"Signs which will enable the teacher to determine the readiness of a child for spontaneous writing are the following: lines drawn straight and parallel in filling in geometrical figures, recognition of the letters of the alphabet in sandpaper with eyes closed, and sureness and ease in composing words."
Ibid p 224, Chap 15

"Only after a child has begun to write on his own should a teacher intervene to guide his progress in writing."
Ibid p 224, Chap 15

"Actual writing is an external manifestation of an inner impulse. It is a pleasure that comes from carrying out a higher activity and not simply an exercise."
Ibid p 225, Chap 15

"Writing is learned in a very short time since it is taught only to children who show a desire for it."
Ibid p 225, Chap 15

"In general all children four-years-old and over are keenly interested in writing. Some of our children, however, have begun to write at three-and-a-half."
Ibid p 226, Chap 15

"The average period that elapses from the first attempt to perform the preparatory exercises to the first written word is for four-year-old children a month and a half, for five-year-old children it is much shorter, about a month."
Ibid p 226, Chap 15

"Experience has taught me to make a clear distinction between reading and writing, and it has shown me that the two acts need not be absolutely contemporaneous. Our experience, however, has been that writing precedes reading, although this is contrary to what is commonly held."
Ibid p 229, Chap 15

"I do not call it reading when a child attempts to verify a word he has written, that is, when he retranslates the symbols into sounds since he already knows the word, having repeated it many times to himself as he was writing. By reading I mean the interpretation of an idea by means of graphic symbols."
Ibid p 229, Chap 16

"A child does not read until he receives ideas from the written word."
Ibid p 229, Chap 16

"If writing serves to correct, or rather, to direct and perfect the mechanism of speech in the child, reading assists in the development of ideas and language. In brief, writing helps a child physiologically and reading helps him socially."
Ibid p 230, Chap 16

"But I was greatly surprised to see that the children, after they had learned how to understand the written cards, refused to take the toys and waste their time in playing and making those friendly gestures to their little companions. Instead, with a kind of insatiable desire they preferred to take out the cards one after the other and read them all. I watched them, trying to fathom the riddle of their minds. After I had thought about this for some time, the thought struck me that through some human instinct children would rather acquire knowledge than be engaged in senseless play, and I reflected on the grandeur of the human mind."
Ibid p 232, Chap 16

"When I saw this surprising result, I was already thinking of trying to get them to read print, and I suggested to the teacher that she write the same word in both script and print on some cards. But the children forstalled me. In the classroom there was a calendar with many words in printed characters, some of which were Gothic. In their craze for reading, some of the children set about looking at this calendar, and to my unspeakable surprise they read both the Roman and the Gothic print... Thus they had nothing more to do than to give them a book, and they actually read the words in it."
Ibid p 233, Chap 16

"It may be asked what is the average time needed for a child to learn how to read. Experience has shown us that, beginning from the moment when a child writes, it takes an average of about fifteen days to pass from this lower form of activity, writing, to the higher one of reading. Accuracy in reading, however, is almost always attained more slowly than that in writing. In most cases a child will write very well, but read only fairly so."
Ibid p 234, Chap 16

"Not all children reach the same standard of achievement at the same age. Since none of them are ever encouraged, much less forced, to do something that they do not care to do, it happens that some children, since they have never asked for help in learning, have been left in peace and can neither read nor write."
Ibid p 234, Chap 16

"If followers of the old method of teaching, which tyrannizes a child's will and stifles his spontaneity, do not think it necessary to force a child to learn how to write before he is six, much less do I believe he should."
Ibid p 234, Chap 16

"...almost all normal children who have been trained according to our method begin to write at four, and at five they can read and write at least as well as children who have finished the first grade. This means they would be in a position to enter second grade with the seven-year-old children usually found there."
Ibid p 234, Chap 16

"...the length of a word and the complexity of its sounds do not constitute a difficulty for a child... It is enough that a word should be phonetic and represent known and present objects."
Ibid p 235, Chap 16

"...it is necessary to aim at arousing a keen interest in reading, for this prepares the way for overcoming the various difficulties connected with spelling."
Ibid p 235, Chap 16

"We thus began to communicate with each other through written language; and this proved to be most interesting to the children. They gradually discovered the wonderful property of writing, that it transmits thought. When I began to write, they trembled in their eagerness to know what I had in mind and to understand it without my pronouncing a single word."
Ibid p 238, Chap 16

"Written language does not indeed need speech. Its whole grandeur is only understood when it is completely isolated from the spoken word."
Ibid p 238, Chap 16

"Experience has shown us that composition should precede the rational reading of sentences just as writing precedes the reading of words. Further, reading that communicates ideas should be mental rather than vocal."
Ibid p 239, Chap 16

"...reading in a loud voice implies the use of two mechanisms of language, the articulate and the graphic, and this makes the work more complex... Children, therefore, who are beginning to read so as to get the thought should do so mentally. When written language leaps to rational thought, it should be kept separate from speech. The written word can transmit thoughts from a distance and do this even when the senses and muscular mechanisms are at rest. It is a spiritualized language that puts men all over the world in communication with each other."
Ibid p 240, Chap 16

"There are, consequently, two periods in the development of language: There is a lower stage which prepares the nervous tracts and the central mechanisms which must put the sensory tracts in relation with the motor mechanisms, and there is a higher stage determined by the higher psychic activities which are exteriorized by the performed mechanisms of language."
Ibid p 244, Chap 17

"We say that spoken language has its beginning in a child when the word he pronounces represents an idea: when, for example, seeing his mother he recognises her and says mamma... We thus hold that language has begun when it is linked up with perception, even though speech itself, in its psycho-motor mechanisms, is still quite rudimentary."
Ibid p 245, Chap 17

"The development of speech takes place between the ages of two and five, the age of perceptions, in which the attention of a child is spontaneously turned towards external objects and his memory is particularly tenacious."
Ibid p 246, Chap 17

"It is a well-known fact that it is only during this age that one can acquire all those characteristic modulations of a language which he would seek in vain to acquire later. A person's mother tongue is the only one that is pronounced well because it is fixed in childhood."
Ibid p 246, Chap 17

"This association between the two languages, spoken and written, is of the utmost importance. Writing becomes a second form of language and is associated with speech through frequently repeated exercises."
Ibid p 253, Chap 17

"...a child who has exercised his hand in a general manner and has employed it in all his various sense exercises, and especially in tracing the letters and making numerous geometrical drawings, ...has no difficulty with individual letters, or even with combinations of them in composing words that interest him and which he wants to fix in his mind with the help of writing. All of a sudden he comes to write, and he writes at once whole sentences and not simply isolated words."
Ibid p 254, Chap 17

"The most favourable age for the development of written language is that of childhood, about the age of four, when the natural processes connected with the development of speech are fully activated, that is, during the sensitive period when speech naturally develops and becomes fixed. A child's sensitiveness to his own development arouses his enthusiasm for learning the alphabet and urges him on to make a phonetic analysis of words into their component sounds. Later, when the child is six or seven years old, the creative period will have passed, and he will no longer have the same natural interest in analyzing either the spoken or the written word. That is why little children as a rule make better and more rapid progress than those who are older. Instead of becoming bored and weary like the older children, they carry on a constant activity that seems to strengthen them."
Ibid p 257, Chap 17

"...the children are even interested in foreign words and... they remember them in a surprising way during all the time required to reproduce them with a moveable alphabet. This indicates that children tend to accumulate words during the sensitive period (between three and five) even when they do not understand them."
Ibid p 261, Chap 17

"why... should not this period of a child's life be utilized for putting order into the words he hears and for learning some scientific terms?... The children like to make and recall the classifications. This confirms the suspicion that it is natural to group words together and that words should be ordered in the mind according to their meaning."
Ibid p 261, Chap 17

"Writing is a key to a double gain. It enables the hand to master a vital skill like that of speaking and to create a second means of communication that reflects the spoken word in all its details. Writing is thus dependent upon mind and hand."
The Secret of Childhood p 131, Chap 19

"Writing should logically flow as a natural consequence of the development of a fixed alphabet. To write properly, however, the hand must be able to draw signs. The signs of the alphabet are as a rule easy to draw since they represent nothing but particularized sounds. But I had not thought of all this before the children taught themselves to write."
Ibid p 131, Chap 19

"This was the greatest event to take place in the first Children's Home... We were struck as if we had witnessed a miracle."
Ibid p 132, Chap 19

"It was only after some six months that they began to understand what it is to read, and they did this only by associating reading with writing."
Ibid p 132, Chap 19

"A premature insistence upon their reading words from books would have had a negative effect. The pursuit of this less important good would have diminished the energies of their dynamic minds. The books, as a consequence, remained for a long time in the cupboard."
Ibid p 143, Chap 19

"Then they understood the meaning of a book, and books became objects of great demand."
Ibid p 134, Chap 19

"I realized that the necessary movement of the hand for sewing had been prepared without sewing ...I thought that one might be prepared to write in this way. The idea interested me greatly, and I marveled at its simplicity. I was surprised that I had not thought of this procedure before observing the girl who was unable to sew."
The Montessori Method p 263, Chap XVI

"The child not only has to learn a new language, but he has to learn at the same time what language is, its very nature, possibilities and purposes. For instance, he not only has to learn the names of things, but that things have names. There must have been a certain period in his life when this astonishing fact revealed itself - that everything has a name."
Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work p 100, Chap V

"People who maintain that children should not be taught to write until they are six or seven years old have not realized that there exists this purely sensorial aspect of language. They are thinking of it in terms of writing and reading whole words or sentences, or even of the ideas they represent."
Ibid p 137, Chap VII

"...this interest in the sensorial aspect of language gives place to a more intellectual one which Montessori calls the 'second sensitive period for language'. It is now the construction of language which fascinates the child, and his interest now becomes focused on the relationship between words... In other words this means that the child from seven to nine is passing through a sensitive period for grammar."
Ibid p 138, Chap VII

Study guide

The Discovery of the Child - Chapters 14, 15, 16, 17

The Secret of Childhood - Chapter 19

The Montessori Method - Chapter XVI

Maria Montessori: Her Life and Works - Chapter V, VII

Journal articles

Epstein A, Schinfeld J (1995) 'We are all Authors!' Montessori Life, v7, n3, p32-34, Summer

Gordon, C (1995) 'What to do with the Grammar Boxes', Montessori Life, v7, n3, p40-41, Summer

Loeffler, M (1993) 'Whole Language in the Montessori Classroom: Continuing the Story', NAMTA Journal, v18, n2, p63-82, Spring

McKenzie, G (1995) 'Montessori Language and the Sensitive Period for the Imagination and Culture', Montessori Life v7, n3, p38-39, Summer

Nichols, A (1984) 'Montessori Language Lessons: The Almost Silent Way Minne', TESOL Journal, v4, p7-22, Fall

Renton, A (1998) 'Cultivating the Natural Linguist, Spotlight: Montessori-Multilingual, Multicultural', Montessori Life, v10, n2, p31-33, Spring

Richardson, S (1997) 'The Montessori Preschool: Preparation for Writing and Reading', Annals of Dyslexia v47, p241-256

Turner, J (1995) 'How do you teach Reading?', Montessori Life, v7, n3, p25-29, Summer

Van Groenou, M (1993) 'Interaction between Bilingualism and Cognitive Growth', Montessori Life, v5, n1, p33-35, Winter

Van Groenou, M (1995) '"Tell me a Story": Using Children's Oral Culture in a Preschool Setting', Montessori Life, v7, n3, p19-21, Summer

Woods, C (1998) 'Raising Literate Children:Tips for Parents', Montessori Life, v10, n3, p45, Summer

Zener, R (1996) 'The Verbal/Linguistic and Visual/Spatial Intelligences', NAMTA Journal, v21, n2, p44-63, Spring

Conference papers

Sassoon, R (1997) 'Handwriting and the Young Child', 22nd International Montessori Congress, Uppsala University, USA, July 22-27

Solzbacher, H (1997) Spoken Language 22nd International Montessori Congress, Uppsala University, USA, July 22-27

Archive resources

Boyd, W (1917) From Locke to Montessori, George Harrap & Co London.

Culverwell, E (1913) The Montessori Principles and Practice, G.Bell & Sons, London.

Kilpatrick, W (1915) Montessori Examined, Constable, London.