Children's Perceptions of Written Word Boundaries

This study was undertaken to examine first grade children's perception of written word boundaries after a year of reading instruction. One hundred seventeen first grade students from a middle to upper middle class suburban community in the South were asked to mark word boundaries in a written sentence presented with no spaces between the words. The data indicated that many children who were at the end of their first year of reading instruction had little idea of what words are. It was also indicated, however, that as the subjects became better readers, they were better at marking word boundaries.