Many South African children struggle in acquiring literacy and reading skills. It seems as if caregivers may be missing an important aspect in guiding children's emergent reading development. The question is whether there are underlying concepts needed for emergent literacy and the acquisition of reading skills. The nature of the reading process…

Using classical and quantile regression analyses, we investigated whether predictor variables for early reading comprehension differed depending on language background and ability level in a mixed group of 161 monolingual (L1) and bilingual (L2) children in second grade (6--8 years). Although L2 readers scored lower on oral language skills and…

Large-scale standardised, early reading assessments abound at the international and national levels, but research into urgent problems facing practitioners remains scarce. Practice-inspired research involves university-researchers in partnership with teacher-researchers undertaking high-quality research to provide relevant and useful knowledge.…

This study explores current reading profiles and concurrent and early predictors of reading in children with autism spectrum disorder. Before the age of 3 years, the study cohort underwent a neurodevelopmental assessment following identification in a population-based autism screening. At age 8 years, reading, language and cognition were assessed.…

Literacy gives children an opportunity to benefit from others' knowledge and experience that far exceeds what they can achieve when reliant on learning orally via personal encounters. Little is known about young children's understanding and use of print as a source of knowledge. Three experiments investigated children's use and understanding of…

This article explores aspects of early language and literacy that may predict later literacy development. It explores a range of assessment procedures used for oral language, vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and early reading and writing. The article then describes a small-scale study which highlights the disconnections between the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between young children's oral language vocabulary and children's reading of written language in beginning reading books. Oral language has been viewed as the foundation for emergent reading development as it provides the semantic base, syntactic base and phonological base for successfully…

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book…

"Sound Foundations," a literacy curriculum designed to teach phonological awareness to preliterate children, focuses exclusively on phoneme identity (that is, different words can start and end with the same sound). It works from the principle that phonemic awareness is necessary but not sufficient to reading, which depends on the…

Some of the difficulties faced by second language learners who are continuing to acquire English at the same time as they start to read simple extended English texts are illustrated. Specific focus is on the question of how writers of early reading material can best help such learners to understand the relationship between spoken and written…

Examines beginning readers' story dictation processes and products over a 16-month period. Investigates level of story structure, conventional expressions, internal responses, spatial-temporal setting, verb tenses, variety of tenses, connectives, anaphora, and dictation process adapting to a scribe. Finds overall development in ability to…

The reports of research in this monograph reflect 18 years of observation of the behaviors of children learning to read in New Zealand schools. The first section of the monograph urges teachers to look more closely at language behaviors in their classrooms to see how children go about the tasks set before them. The second section reports on…