A requisite auditory skill in children beginning to write : « syllabic analysis ». A longitudinal developmental study from 5 to 8. Purpose. This paper is concerned with a specific auditory difficulty in normal young pupils when they begin to learn to write from a teacher's dictation, when they have to analyse the sound of spoken syllabes. They are not still able to understand, to « hear », that, in the spoken syllabe /to/ (for instance) there are first the elementary sound /t/ and the elementary sound /o/. The lack of maturity in this phonetic analysis, even with very simple spoken syllabes, stopes the children learning dictation and writting in school ; an important auditory pre-requisite to perform dictation exercices is not still present among these young children. We have called this skill : « Syllabic Analysis ». Method. Using the longitudinal method we studied the development of this auditory capacity in children during three consecutive years 5 to 6, 6 to 7, 7 to 8. The sample consists of 224 unselected pupils. Our test is composed of 42 loud-voiced simple syllabes (1 consonnant + 1 vowel). This test is only in the auditory modality : children have nothing to read. Control tests have been applied, designed to eliminate all errors which might be ascribed to defects of discrimination and pronunciation. Results. This auditory analysis skill develops progressively during pre-school and school age. When entering in elementary school at the age of six, most of the children are not sufficiently matured. The lower the Q.I., the more serious is the lack of maturity. In children whose Q.I. is below .100 this difficulty persists during a long time.Leroy-Boussion A., Martinez F. Un pré-requis auditivo-phonétique pour l'apprentissage du langage écrit : l'analyse syllabique.. In: Enfance, tome 27, n°1-2, 1974. pp. 111-130