Letter sound knowledge, which, together with phonological awareness, is highly predictive of pre-school children's reading acquisition, derives from children's knowledge of their associated letter names and the phonological patterns of those names. In this study of 66 monolingual pre-school children we examined whether phonological patterns…

This book concerns the growth of a single child, as reported by her mother, from her first encounters with books and print to the beginnings of independent reading and writing. The study took place mainly between the child's third and fourth birthdays, during which period weekly tape recordings were made of story-reading sessions with one or both…

To gain additional information about how young children actually develop and use literacy before entering school, four young children were studied indepth by means of family questionnaires, reading age tests, diagnostic subskill tests, and miscue analysis. Five months later, the children were again tested to see if reading age had increased and if…

A case study documented the emergence of literacy in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of 2 years, 7 months and 3 years, 2 months. The case study examined the relation between the subject's oral language and reading development; the bases of his word identification; the relation between his reading and writing development; and…

This case study documents the emergence of reading ability in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of two years, seven months and three years, two months. At the end of this period, his word recognition ability was at the late first-grade level. Writing skills began to develop when he was four years old. (DB)

Reading can be defined as a meaningful interaction with a print setting. Interactive models of reading assume that lower level and higher level processing occurs simultaneously, interacting with each other. The familiarity of the book, the context in which a sign occurs, and the illustrations of a book are all examples of print setting cues that…

With practical applications for parents and teachers, this book uses diary entries, tape recordings, and videotapes made by the child's mother from a researcher's perspective to chronicle a child's reading and writing development from birth to age three. The introduction provides an overview of how children learn to talk, read, and write;…

Details events from the experiences of two young children as they learned written language. Concludes that children need to have a say in why and what they are reading. (FL)

A study investigated the linguistic development of three kindergarten children judged to be high, moderate, or low in emergent reading ability. Specifically, the study examined whether a developmental direction from dialogue to monologue exists in the children and whether a characteristic of thought termed "inner speech" underlies each…

Early reading should be studied from three perspectives: the function of print, the form of print, and the conventions of print. In so doing, it may be possible to avoid some of the hazards that have plagued the field, such as unsubstantiated assumptions about beginning reading and how it should be taught, erroneous beliefs that maturation plays…