What is a key characteristic of the morphophonemic stage of writing development?

The morphophonemic stage of writing development is characterized by a child's ability to apply linguistic rules that govern how sounds change when morphemes—the smallest units of meaning—are added or altered within words. This includes recognizing how prefixes and suffixes impact the pronunciation or spelling of base words, allowing the writer to accurately represent these changes in their writing. For example, understanding that the plural form of "cat" is "cats," which involves modifying the base word with the morpheme "-s" to indicate plurality, showcases this ability.

In contrast, understanding basic letter-sound relationships and using letters to represent individual sounds focus more on the earlier phonetic and phonological stages of writing where the emphasis is on one-to-one letter-sound correspondence rather than the influence of morphemes. Creating single-letter representations of words typically occurs at an even earlier stage where children may rely on initials or single letters to convey meaning, bypassing more complex morphological understanding. Thus, the application of rules for modifying sounds based on morphemes clearly highlights the defining characteristic of the morphophonemic writing stage.