To better understand language-disordered children, the article describes prelinguistic development in normal children including such precursors to literacy as literacy socialization, a life filled with literacy events and functions, language awareness, word consciousness, ability to segment sentences into words, phonological awareness, and…

Describes the rationale for The Informal Reading-Language Test, then presents the test. (FL)

When kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade children judged and repeated sentences that varied grammatically, the older children produced more accurate judgments, but no age differences were noted for repetition. Unbiased judgment accuracy correlated with prereaders' reading readiness scores, providing evidence for the relationship between the…

Reviews research discussing early writing and invented spellings of young children as indicators of their readiness to learn to read and write. (MKM)

The model delineates a structure for summarizing the dimensions of a developmentally oriented prereading program. The structure provides a guide for planning the curriculum so that parents and teachers can arrange experiences that will help children develop higher levels of representation and more complex language structures, and extend their…

The project was designed to develop a multisensory, language-oriented curriculum to introduce the letters of the alphabet to six hearing impaired preschoolers. Every week a new letter is introduced via such tasks as art and cooking activities, snacks, beginning sound picture cards, yarn and lacing letters, sandpaper letters, alphabet string beads,…

Suggests ways parents can help their children develop oral language facility and build positive attitudes toward the printed language so they will learn to read easily and happily when they get to school. (ED)

This study was designed to assess the intercorrelations of selected variables of reading readiness to determine which measures were related. (Author/RK)

Reviews the proceedings of a 1971 conference on the relationships between speech and learning to read, and discusses related literature and research under these topics: acquisition of speech and reading, the deaf child's language acquisition, orthography and linguistic awareness, reading maturity and age: short-term memory, and attaining fluent…

The Building Blocks Model for promoting basic literacy in young children is a three-dimensional model comprised of building blocks, one for each step of the process of laying the foundations for literacy. Each of the small blocks within the large solid cube represents a unique ability that can be distinguished in terms of the three…

This series of 12 articles for parents on how to help pre-schoolers and beginning readers at home was written for the National Reading Center by specialists in reading and early childhood education. The titles and authors are: "Getting Ready to Read" (E. Robert La Crosse), "Creating a Good Reading Climate at Home" (Mary Frances K. Johnson),…

Describes how to use wordless picture books to develop reading readiness and language competence. (MKM)

A review of the literature and research studies supports the psycholinguistic position regarding the acquisition of reading skills in that a positive correlation exists between the act of reading to children and their eventual reading achievements. (JN)

Because reading is a language-based skill and many communicatively handicapped youngsters experience difficulties with it, speech-language pathologists have important roles in assisting with reading development for these children. Suggestions are offered for use in speech-language sessions and with teachers or parents. (Author)

Reports on a study that examined patterns and interrelationships in the development of print awareness over the preschool years with results indicating that preschool children do not acquire such skills and concepts in a fixed order. (MKM)