What does pre-phonetic spelling refer to?

Pre-phonetic spelling refers to the initial stage of spelling development in young children where they write without a clear understanding of the correspondence between sounds and letters. At this stage, children often engage in scribbling or produce strings of letters that do not represent phonetic sounds or actual words. This stage is characterized by a lack of phonemic awareness, and children are more focused on the physical act of writing rather than conveying specific sounds or letters that correspond to those sounds. It reflects their exploration of writing mechanics before they have fully grasped the principles of letter-sound correspondence that will come later in their spelling development.

While some children might start to display an understanding of orthographic rules or visually accurate spelling in subsequent stages, pre-phonetic spelling is specifically about the absence of this understanding.