What characteristic defines a late stage emergent writer?

A late stage emergent writer is characterized by their ability to string letters together, which reflects their early stages of developing writing skills. At this point, the writer is exploring the connection between letters and sounds, beginning to understand that letters represent sounds in words. Even though their writing may appear random and not yet structured, this experimentation is a critical component of their development.

As children progress, their writing ability evolves toward more structured sentences and complete paragraphs, which are characteristics of more advanced writing stages. Thus, while composing complete paragraphs and writing structured sentences represent later stages of writing development, they do not define a late stage emergent writer specifically. The focus in this emergent phase is on the foundational skills of letter recognition and sound association, as seen in the ability to string letters together.