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Document 1 of 1 Home Grown for Reading: Parental Contributions to Young Children's Emergent Literacy and WordRecognition Author: Evans, Mary Ann; Shaw, Deborah ProQuest document link Abstract (Abstract): During the preschool years, letter knowledge appears to progress from reciting thealphabet, to printing and recognising one's own name, to identifying, labelling and printing letters of the alphabet(Bialystok, 1992; Byrne &Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; [Mason, J. M], 1980). Many parents report explicitly teachingtheir children the names and/or sounds of letters and how to print them, and provide their children with alphabetblocks, books, and friezes. For example in Haney and Hill's (2004) study, 71% parents of children ages 3 to 5reported teaching letter names and 65% reported teaching letter sounds. Similarly Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans,and Jared (2006) found that parents reported involving their children in printing their names and learning orpractising letter names and sounds as frequently as reading them storybooks. The former activities clusteredwith others entailing practising reading and writing. The extent to which parents involved their children in thiscluster of activities was concurrently related to children's understanding of the printed forms of words, even aftercontrolling for children's age and independent pursuit of these same activities. Likewise studies contrasting thefrequency of informal print exposure through shared book reading with the frequency of parentreported teachingabout print (Evans, Shaw, &Bell, 2000; Sénéchal, 2006; Sénéchal &LeFevre, 2002; Sénéchal, LeFevre,Thomas, &Daley, 1998) demonstrated that informal print exposure was unrelated to letter knowledge andsubsequent reading skill in first grade, but reports of teaching about print were positively predictive. Only later,once children had developed the ability to decode words with relative ease, did informal print exposure (and aswill be seen below, vocabulary development associated with it) show any relationship. This parental coaching has been clearly documented in several studies (Evans, Barraball, &Eberle, 1998;Evans, Moretti, Shaw, &Fox, 2003; Hannon, Jackson, &Weinberger, 1986; Lancy, Draper, &Boyce, 1989;Mansell, Evans, &Hamilton-Hulak, 2005; Stolz &Fischel, 2003; Tracey &Young, 2002). These studies haveshown that parents appear to be sensitive to their child's developing skill, adjusting the way they respond tochildren's reading errors or miscues. As children move from kindergarten through grade two and develop moreadvanced skill, parents are more likely to draw attention to the letters on which an error was made, encouragedecoding via phonics, and ask the child to try again; and are less likely to offer picture and context clues (Evanset al., 1998; 2003; Mansell et al., 2005; Stolz &Fischel, 2003). Exactly what a parent should best do has notbeen well established, because most studies have failed to account for children's initial reading level whenexamining the effects of different styles of parent feedback over time. A recent exception to this (Evans,Mansell, &Shaw, 2006) showed that, after controlling for their earlier reading skill, prolonging the provision ofcontext and picture clues across kindergarten and grade one negatively predicted children's word identificationskill in grades one and two amongst both skilled and less skilled readers. This mirrors studies noted above inwhich specifically encouraging the young child to attend to and process print and try to write benefits readingskill development. However, carefully controlled experimental manipulations of parent coaching in shared bookreading have yet to be published. Cet article est une évaluation intégrée des principaux aspects de la litéracie émergente et des activités à lamaison qui tendent, selon la recherche empirique, à favoriser leur développement. Vu l'importance de lareconnaissance des mots dans l'apprentissage de la lecture, on y souligne l'apport des activités à la maisonliées à la reconnaissance des mots et à quatre volets de la litéracie émergente, qui contribuent eux-mêmes à lareconnaissance des mots. La reconnaissance phonologique, la connaissance des lettres, les conceptsd'impression et le vocabulaire en font partie. Les activités de lecture avec un parent font l'objet d'une attention

particulière dans cet article. On y présente leurs différentes facettes, leur nature changeante et leursrépercussions potentielles sur la litéracie émergente et sur les compétences liées à la reconnaissance desmots. Full text: Headnote This article provides an integrative review of key aspects of emergent literacy and specific home activities thatempirical research has shown to support their development. Given the importance of word recognition inreading development, home contributions to word recognition as well as to four areas of emergent literacy thatcontribute to word recognition are highlighted. These include phonological awareness, letter knowledge, printconcepts, and vocabulary. Particular attention is devoted to the activity of shared book reading to outline itsdifferent facets, changing nature, and potential impact on emergent literacy and word recognition skill. Keywords: emergent literacy, home literacy environment, shared book reading About a half a century ago-a phrase that conveys just how much our conception has changed-children weregiven "reading readiness tests" at school entrance to assess whether they were "ready" for the new initiative oflearning to read. About 20 years ago, in concert with views of child development as a constructivist process, thisconception began to change toward an understanding of learning to read as a process that starts much earlierin life and that is based upon a variety of foundational skills acquired before children enter formal schooling. Theterm emergent literacy, launched by Teale and Sulzby (1986) in their edited volume, and brought to life in clay's(1993) observational studies of young children, was introduced to refer to this conception. More recently, it hascome to refer to the skills and reading-like behaviours that are developmental precursors to their conventionaland more advanced counterparts. The view that the home environment in which children grow plays a substantial role in their literacy developmentis nicely illustrated by a large-scale study of twins completed by Petrill, Deater-Deckard, Schatschneider, andDavis (2005). Here, family environment characteristics were associated with children's reading outcome beyondwhat could be explained by genes shared by parents and children. The purpose of this review article is to detailkey activities of the home environment provided by parents to young children that are predictive of readingdevelopment in general and, more specifically, of aspects of emergent literacy skills contributing to wordrecognition skill-phonological ability, alphabetic knowledge, concepts of print, and vocabulary. Given thesalience of shared book reading as a home activity, a separate section is devoted to its different facets,changing nature, and potential effects. To provide a background for why these specific topics have beenselected, a brief outline follows directly below of what is meant by emergent literacy and of the transition fromemergent literacy to conventional word recognition. Emergent Literacy and Word Recognition In explicating the term emergent literacy, Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) distinguished between "inside-out" and"outside-in" knowledge. The first refers to information relied on within the printed word to translate print intophonological representations or spoken words (i.e., to decode), and conversely to translate spoken words intoprint. This includes alphabetic knowledge (letters and the sounds they represent) and phonological awareness(awareness and ability to reflect on the sounds in spoken words). The second-outside-in-entails informationfrom outside the printed word to help the reader derive meaning from it, and includes domains such as semanticand syntactic knowledge, knowledge of narrative structure, and broader conceptual understanding. Similarly,Scarborough (2001) conceptualised skilled reading to be comprised of two strands of underlying skills. The firstconsists of word recognition skills that include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition ofwords. The second consists of language comprehension skills entailing vocabulary, syntax, backgroundknowledge of facts and concepts; knowledge about print concepts and genres; and verbal reasoning skills. Thedistinction in both articles parallels a "simple view" of reading put forth by Gough and Tumner (1986) in whichreading is conceptualised as the product of decoding and comprehension, decoding being the act of translatingprint to sound and in doing so recognising spoken words in print and their associated meanings and usages.

Several stage theories have been put forward for the development of word recognition, many of which areconsistent to some degree with that of Ehri (1999). In the first stage called prealphabetic, logographic, selective-cue, or paired-associate, children identify words based on their overall shape, context, or the background onwhich they appear. During the second partial alphabetic stage, also referred to as the visual recognition, orrudimentary alphabetic phase, children use some letters-often the first and/or last in words-in combination withtheir limited knowledge of letters to guess at words. In the third full alphabetic stage, named by others as thespelling-sound, or cipher reading stage, a more complete knowledge of letter-sound correspondences allowschildren to more accurately decode words and store sight words to help them read new words by analogy.Finally, in the fourth phase, the consolidated alphabetic phase, children consolidate their knowledge of recurringletter patterns and words through repeated exposure and experience to read more efficiently. In fact, Share(1999) has proposed that once a certain level of skill in phonologically receding words has been reached, itbecomes a self-teaching mechanism in which children are able to create at least an approximation of howwords are pronounced, recognise those word as a part of their vocabulary, and develop the word-specificorthographic representations necessary for skilled reading. Accordingly, attention is rightly directed atphonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge (letter name knowledge and letter sound knowledge), conceptsof print and printed words, and vocabulary in the development of reading skill. Each of these areas andresearch supporting a linkage between home activities and their development is presented below. Phonological Awareness Phonological awareness, the conscious awareness of linguistic units (syllables, rhymes, phonemes) of spokenlanguage, is widely accepted to play an important role in learning to read (see reviews by Adams, 1990; Castles&Coltheart, 2004; National Reading Panel, 2000; Scarborough, 2001). As outlined in these reviews, longitudinaland correlational studies have indicated that phonological awareness is concurrently and predictively related toreading performance after controlling for confounding variables, such as intelligence, socioeconomic status, andgeneral language ability, and children with reading difficulties perform less well on phonological awarenesstasks than normal age-matched or reading levelmatched peers. Phonological awareness appears to develop from larger to smaller sound units, with conscious awareness ofsyllables and rhymes preceding that of single phonemes, and from initial to ending to medial positions in spokenwords. Controversy exists regarding which aspects of phonological awareness are more important (see Castles&Coltheart, 2004; Goswami, 2002), with some suggesting that rhyming is less critical than phonemic awareness(i.e., awareness of individual phonemes; Blaiklock, 2004; Hatcher &Hulme, 1999; Muter et al., 1998; Wagner etal., 1997). Bryant (2002) has argued that rhyme awareness nonetheless may be an important developmentalprecursor. If so, parents who tell nursery rhymes to, read rhyming poetry to, and sing songs with their children,encouraging them to fill in the rhyming words, may facilitate the beginnings of this skill. Some support for thisnotion is provided by Bryant, Bradley, McLean, and Grassland (1989) who found that children who knew morenursery rhymes were better at rhyming tasks and later more successful in reading. In addition, Evans, Shaw,Bell, Moretti, and Fox (2002) found that the earlier parents began reading books to their children, the betterchildren were on phonemic awareness tests after controlling for cognitive abilities. A possible explanation is thatbooks for young children are often written in rhyming stanzas with strong rhythmic structure in the syllables. Alphabetic Knowledge The predictive relationship between phonemic awareness and reading is not simple, however, in that someletter knowledge may be necessary for phonemic awareness (e.g., Blaiklock, 2004; Wagner et al., 1997;Wimmer, Landed, Linortner, &Hummer, 1991). In addition, its relationship to subsequent word recognition issizeably reduced after controlling for letter knowledge (e.g., Castles &Coltheart, 2004; Evans, Bell, Shaw,Moretti, &Page, 2006; MacMillan, 2002). In fact, the meta-analyses by the National Reading Panel (2000) of theeffectiveness of phonological awareness training programmes led to the conclusion that although phonologicalawareness is important for learning to read, it alone it is not sufficient. Rather letter knowledge must accompany

it, with programmes that combine phonological and letter training being more effective In addition, young children's letter knowledge, both names and sounds, before school entry and in the earlyprimary grades, is itself predictive of future reading achievement (see reviews by Adams, 1990; Foulin, 2005;Scarborough, 1998). One mechanism for this relationship may be that high letter knowledge, especially letternaming fluency, reflects the thoroughness and confidence with which letter names are known and degree towhich letters and other visual stimuli can be labelled automatically and effortlessly (Adams, 1990). A second isthat letter names are closely related to their sounds, which may facilitate learning grapheme-phonemecorrespondences and decoding (Treiman, Tincoff, Rodriguez, Mouzaki, &Francis, 1998). During the preschool years, letter knowledge appears to progress from reciting the alphabet, to printing andrecognising one's own name, to identifying, labelling and printing letters of the alphabet (Bialystok, 1992; Byrne&Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; Mason, 1980). Many parents report explicitly teaching their children the names and/orsounds of letters and how to print them, and provide their children with alphabet blocks, books, and friezes. Forexample in Haney and Hill's (2004) study, 71% parents of children ages 3 to 5 reported teaching letter namesand 65% reported teaching letter sounds. Similarly Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans, and Jared (2006) found thatparents reported involving their children in printing their names and learning or practising letter names andsounds as frequently as reading them storybooks. The former activities clustered with others entailing practisingreading and writing. The extent to which parents involved their children in this cluster of activities wasconcurrently related to children's understanding of the printed forms of words, even after controlling forchildren's age and independent pursuit of these same activities. Likewise studies contrasting the frequency ofinformal print exposure through shared book reading with the frequency of parentreported teaching about print(Evans, Shaw, &Bell, 2000; Sénéchal, 2006; Sénéchal &LeFevre, 2002; Sénéchal, LeFevre, Thomas, &Daley,1998) demonstrated that informal print exposure was unrelated to letter knowledge and subsequent reading skillin first grade, but reports of teaching about print were positively predictive. Only later, once children haddeveloped the ability to decode words with relative ease, did informal print exposure (and as will be seen below,vocabulary development associated with it) show any relationship. Formal and informal print activities need not be mutually exclusive. Justice and Ezell (2002) effectivelydemonstrated that storybooks can be read to children both for enjoyment and meaning as well as with a printfocus, such as asking children to find the letters in their name on the page or with a certain shape, and namingletters. Moreover, they showed that reading to children with such extratextual comments focussed on printresulted in children making greater gains in alphabet knowledge, in print concepts, and in recognising wordswithin picture contexts, than reading books with extratextual comments focussed on the pictures. In addition, certain kinds of children's books may be viewed as "print salient" via the prominence of the printwithin the book. The most notable are alphabet books. These often contain an upper and lowercase letter, brieftext, and an accompanying illustration of an item or cluster of items whose name begins with the letter and/orletter sound, such as "C is for" for example "chimpanzee," "cat" or "centipede." Also included are books withsimple printed signs such as "STOP" or words such as "ZZZZZZ" embedded in the pictures or enlarged in thetext. Alphabet books may be traced back to horn books which appear hanging from children's waists in paintings ofthe 15th century. Horn books displayed the alphabet in printed or manuscript letters behind a thin transparentcovering of horn, hence their name. As printed materials became more widespread in the late 18th century,horn books were replaced by folded sheets with the letters and accompanying illustrations (called battledoors)and still later by alphabet books (Kevill-Davies, 1991). Alphabet books are often the first type of book purchasedby parents (Zeece, 1996) and are commonly found in homes. For example, in the study by Levy et al. (2006),parents reported reading alphabet books with their children three times a month and children looking at them ontheir own an additional three times a month. Small n observations of parents and their preschool-age children reading a variety of books together by Smolkin

and Yaden (1992) and Yaden, Smolkin, and MacGillivray (1993) showed that, whilst parent and child questionsand comments about the print were rare, they were more frequent when reading an alphabet book. Similarly,Stadler and McEvoy (2003) found that print-focussed comments were more common with an alphabet book, butonly for normally developing and not language-impaired children. Bus and van Uzendoorn (1988) also observedthat with alphabet books, parent comments were more likely to include naming letters, helping children torecognise sounds in words, and connecting letters to words. Important to note, however, these behaviours weremore evident when children had higher levels of emergent literacy. Thus, these studies suggest that parents aremore likely to emphasise letters and letter sounds rather than the pictures in alphabet books when they estimatethat their children will benefit from these comments. A limited set of classroom research (Brabham, Murray, &Bowden, 2006; Greenewald &Kulig, 1995; Murray,Stahl, &Ivey, 1996) suggests that alphabet books may foster alphabetic knowledge. Findings from the latterstudy were also suggestive of gains in phonological awareness. In this study, Murray, Stahl and Ivey assignedthree junior kindergarten classroom to one of three conditions over a 3-week period-reading four conventionalalphabet books showing letters and corresponding illustrations, versus featuring letter names in the text, versuspicture story books. As would be expected with the passage of time and the curriculum, all groups gained inalphabetic, print knowledge, and phonological awareness. Children who read the conventional alphabet booksmade greater gains in phonological awareness than those who read the letter-name books, but did not differfrom those who read the storybooks. Unfortunately, however, there was no control for curriculum to untangle theeffects of the different kinds of books from the classrooms in which each was embedded. Similar gains werealso observed by Brabham et al. (2006) when contrasting teachers who read alphabet books with an emphasison phonemes of the letters versus an emphasis on the meanings of the objects associated with the letter sound. There is also recent evidence from a study by Evans and Saint-Aubin (2008) that the physical layout of somealphabet books may be helpful in drawing children's attention to print. They tracked the eye-movements ofpreschool age children reading an alphabet book having a simple illustration, a single printed word, and a largeletter on each page. Whilst nonreaders attended primarily to the illustrations, they nonetheless fixated thealphabet letter and printed word more than would be expected for nonreaders. Thus, alphabet books, inthemselves and in interactions with parents who highlight the names, shapes, and sounds of letters, are likely avaluable resource for developing and consolidating alphabetic knowledge. Print Concepts In the course of informal learning experiences in the preschool years, children also acquire concepts of print(clay, 1993) and concepts of printed words, such as what constitutes letters and words as opposed to squiggles,pictures, and numbers; the direction in which letters are sequenced and words are read; and how printed wordsare separated by spaces. (see review by TolchinskyLandsmann, 2003.) For example, children ages 2 to 4initially draw to "print." Gradually, their printing, but not their drawings, begins to resemble features of writingwith smaller combinations of shapes in a linear sequence separated by spaces (Levin &Bus, 2003). Between 3and 6, children come to regard pictures and shapes as not readable (Bialystok, 1992; Levy et al., 2006), and toidentify words as having strings of letters as opposed to single letters (Landsmann &Karmiloff-Smith, 1992;Pick, Unze, Brownell, Drozdal, &Hopmann, 1978). Scarborough's (1998) review found a mean correlation of .46 between concepts of print and later readingachievement. It may be that explicitly talking about print and pointing to words whilst reading to children helpsthem to develop this understanding, but supporting research is scant. What has been demonstrated to be ofbenefit, however, is the activity of engaging the child in writing. Young children often pretend to and attempt towrite, and parents join in to model how to print letters and words (Saracho, 1999; Tudge &Putnam, 1997). Aramand Biron (2004) showed that joint writing interventions with children ages 3 to 5 years were more effective thanjoint reading interventions in fostering a variety of print specific knowledge including letter knowledge,

orthographic awareness, and word writing. Moreover, phonological awareness also improved. Shared readingand shared writing activities frequently coexist in homes and thus it is noteworthy that Aram and Levin (2002)found shared writing activities to be predictive of alphabetic skill after partialing out home general environmentand frequency of storybook reading. This points to child-parent writing as valuable activity distinct from sharedreading for the development of print knowledge. Shared Book Reading There is perhaps no other activity that has the potential to seamlessly meld together and foster enjoyment,language, and literacy than shared book reading, and an ever increasing body of research has focussed on thenature of and benefits of what Pellegrini (1991) referred to it as "the literacy event par excellence" (p. 380). Intheir review of the shared book reading research, Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) concluded that typically 43%to 75% of preschoolers are read to on a daily basis or more. In the present authors' database of 659 parents inSouthwestern Ontario mainly, 72% reported reading five or more days a week to their child. In low-incomefamilies in the United States, about half of children under age 4 are read to daily (Dickinson &Tabors, 2001;Raikeset al., 2006). Not surprisingly, much research has attempted to establish a connexion between the quantity of reading tochildren and their language and literacy skills. Meta-analyses by both Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pelligrini (1995)and Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) concluded that time spent in shared book reading at home accounted for8% of the variance in children's reading achievement, which according to the first article was substantial, andaccording to the second, modest. Scarborough and Dobrich's meta-analysis did reveal, however, a slightlystronger effect on children's language development. Shared Reading and Vocabulary Development Story book reading exposes children to more linguistically complex language and varied vocabulary than isfound during toy play, mealtime, routine caregiving, and prime time television. Debaryshe (1993) and Raikes etal. (2006) reported that joint book reading at home is highly correlated with receptive vocabulary, with the age ofonset being a robust variable compared to the amount. Others have noted that parents actively teach and testvocabulary whilst reading to their toddlers and preschoolers, and use more complex speech and cognitivelyhigher-demand questions as children get older (e.g., Beals &Tabors, 1995; Sénéchal, Cornell, &Broda, 1995;Snow &Goldfield, 1983). Experimental research with preschoolers in which novel words have been introducedin books read to them has also shown positive influences on vocabulary development (e.g., Biemiller &Boote,2006; Elley, 1989; Ewers &Brownson, 1999; Sénéchal &Cornell, 1993); although it should be noted that studieshave dealt primarily with the acquisition of new words rather than greater depth of meaning in known words.Nonetheless, having some representation of a spoken word in long-term memory allows children to matchwritten words as they decode them to words they have heard and know. When the characteristics of experimental studies showing gains in vocabulary from story book reading areexamined, some combination of the following is found: (a) the same books were read at least three times; (b)there were multiple occurrences of each novel word in the text; (c) the novel words were clearly illustrated bypictures and specifically pointed to by the reader; (d) they were important to the text; (e) their meaning was clearfrom the context, picture, or adult's explanation; (f) they were largely nouns; (g) the child was asked to repeatthe words, retell the story, and/or engage in activities related to the words' meanings. Under some combinationof the above, about 20% of the novel words in storybooks were learned. These features, then, would appear to be good guidelines for parents to follow in tailoring shared book readingto maximise this activity's benefit on vocabulary development. Regrettably, Pursoo, Evans, and Shaw (2005)and Tabors, Beals, and Weizman (2001) observed that when unusual words are encountered during reading,most parents of older children in kindergarten through grade two children do not pause to explain them, andchildren rarely ask for clarification. This may explain why Beals and Tabors (1995) found no relation betweenrare words in book reading conversations and children's receptive vocabulary scores. However, clear

accompanying pictures in books may compensate to some extent for this, in that children appear to process thepictures in concert with the text (Evans, Saint-Aubin, Roy-Charland, &Alien, 2006) and pictures play a facilitativerole in young children's comprehension of the storyline in books (Lesgold, Levin, Shimron, &Guttman, 1975).Explicit explanations should further boost comprehension. Shared Reading and Word Recognition Studies monitoring children's eye movements of preschool and kindergarten children have shown that withoutthe ability to read the printed text, these children are primarily listeners during shared book reading, lookingrarely at the print (Evans &Saint-Aubin, 2005; Evans, Williamson, &Pursoo, 2008; Justice, Skibbe, Canning&Lankford, 2005; Roy-Charland, Saint-Aubin &Evans, 2007). At these ages, parents invite nonreaders into therole of reader through books with predictable text in which the child "reads" on the basis of context and pictureclues, previous knowledge, and familiar, recurring grammatical patterns. Shared reading with preschoolers,then, would be expected to have modest effects on word reading development, matching the conclusion ofScarborough and Dobrich (1994). However, as children develop word recognition skills, parents accord more of the reader role to their childrenand actively coach their children in decoding the print. More than 20 years ago, Hewison and Tizard (1980)reported that mothers who regularly listened to their children read had children who scored significantly higheron tests of reading achievement compared to mothers who did not. This finding was experimentally replicatedby Tizard, Schofield, and Hewison (1982) who found that six- and sevenyear-old children whose parentsregularly listened to them read made greater reading gains than control children who received teacherassistance or no assistance at all, gains that were maintained three years later (Hewison, 1988). Whilst some ofthese gains were likely due to increased time-on-task reading, they also were likely due to the substantialcoaching that occurs when parents listen to children read, helping them to decode unfamiliar wordsencountered in the text. This parental coaching has been clearly documented in several studies (Evans, Barraball, &Eberle, 1998;Evans, Moretti, Shaw, &Fox, 2003; Hannon, Jackson, &Weinberger, 1986; Lancy, Draper, &Boyce, 1989;Mansell, Evans, &Hamilton-Hulak, 2005; Stolz &Fischel, 2003; Tracey &Young, 2002). These studies haveshown that parents appear to be sensitive to their child's developing skill, adjusting the way they respond tochildren's reading errors or miscues. As children move from kindergarten through grade two and develop moreadvanced skill, parents are more likely to draw attention to the letters on which an error was made, encouragedecoding via phonics, and ask the child to try again; and are less likely to offer picture and context clues (Evanset al., 1998; 2003; Mansell et al., 2005; Stolz &Fischel, 2003). Exactly what a parent should best do has notbeen well established, because most studies have failed to account for children's initial reading level whenexamining the effects of different styles of parent feedback over time. A recent exception to this (Evans,Mansell, &Shaw, 2006) showed that, after controlling for their earlier reading skill, prolonging the provision ofcontext and picture clues across kindergarten and grade one negatively predicted children's word identificationskill in grades one and two amongst both skilled and less skilled readers. This mirrors studies noted above inwhich specifically encouraging the young child to attend to and process print and try to write benefits readingskill development. However, carefully controlled experimental manipulations of parent coaching in shared bookreading have yet to be published. Concluding Comments The material presented above demonstrates the valuable role of parents in "growing" prerequisite skills forchildren's reading development. The review has focussed on specific home activities, falling within the generalconcept of family literacy, that research has been able to connect to key areas predictive of reading skill(phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge, vocabulary, and word recognition). Theseinclude shared book reading (alphabet and rhyming books, books that expand vocabulary, and text just beyondthe child's independent reading level in which the parent can be reading coach), teaching letter names and

sounds, drawing the child's attention to print and its form and purpose, and parent-child writing activities.Identifying specific activities may appear reductionistic, and it should be emphasised that such activities likelywork together. Also, the affective side must not be forgotten. Literacy interactions, whether reading a book,printing, conversing, or teaching, should be enjoyable. In fact, parents from junior kindergarten through thirdgrade regard fostering enjoyment and their relationship with their child as the top-rated goals for shared bookreading (Audet, Evans, Williamson, &Reynolds, 2008). Children who experience both enjoyment and positiveregard in combination with direction, coaching, and correction will likely more readily attend to and internalisethe information and skills that parents attempt to teach them, and develop the interest and motivation to sustaintheir learning. Similarly, parents who incorporate the literacy activities highlighted in this review frequently andnaturally will better have an opportunity to observe their child's skill level and fine-tune their interactions toincrease child interest and participation. Résumé Cet article est une évaluation intégrée des principaux aspects de la litéracie émergente et des activités àlamaison qui tendent, selon la recherche empirique, àfavoriser leur développement. Vu l'importance de lareconnaissance des mots dans l'apprentissage de la lecture, on y souligne l'apport des activités àla maisonliées àla reconnaissance des mots et àquatre volets de la litéracie émergente, qui contribuent eux-mêmes àlareconnaissance des mots. La reconnaissance phonologique, la connaissance des lettres, les conceptsd'impression et le vocabulaire en font partie. Les activités de lecture avec un parent font l'objet d'une attentionparticulière dans cet article. On y présente leurs différentes facettes, leur nature changeante et leursrépercussions potentielles sur la litéracie émergente et sur les compétences liées àla reconnaissance des mots. References References Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Aram, D., &Biron, S. (2004). Joint storybook reading and joint writing interventions among low SESpreschoolers: Differential contributions to early literacy. Early Childhood Quarterly, 19, 588-610. Aram, D., &Levin, I. (2002). Mother-child joint writing and storybook reading: Relations with literacy among lowSES kindergartners. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 48, 202-224. Audet, D., Evans, M. A., Williamson, K., &Reynolds, K. (2008). Goals for shared reading across the primarygrades and their relationship to parental behavior with 4-year-olds. Early Education and Development, 19, 113-138. Beals, D. E., &Tabors, P. O. (1995). Arboretum, bureaucratic, and carbohydrates: Preschoolers' exposure torare vocabulary at home. First Language, 15, 57-76. Bialystok, E. (1992). The emergence of symbolic thought: Introduction. Cognitive Development, 7, 269-272. Biemiller, A., &Boote, C. (2006). An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades. Journalof Educational Psychology, 98, 44-62. Blaiklock, K. E. (2004). The importance of letter knowledge in the relationship between phonological awarenessand reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 36-57. Brabham, E. G., Murray, B. A., &Bowden, S. H. (2006). Reading alphabet books in kindergarten: Effects ofinstructional emphasis and media practice. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 20, 219-234. Bryant, P. (2002). It doesn't matter whether onset and rime predicts reading better than phoneme awarenessdoes or vice versa. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 41-46. Bryant, P., Bradley, L. L., MacLean, M., &Crossland, J. (1989). Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading.Journal of Child Language, 16, 407-428. Bus, A. G., &van Uzendoorn, M. H. (1988). Mother-child interactions: Attachment and emergent literacy: Across-sectional study. Child Development, 59, 1262-1272.

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Publisher: Canadian Psychological Association Place of publication: Ottawa Country of publication: Canada Publication subject: Psychology ISSN: 07085591 Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: Feature Document feature: References ProQuest document ID: 220806181 Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/220806181?accountid=13155 Copyright: Copyright Canadian Psychological Association May 2008 Last updated: 2014-01-23 Database: ProQuest Research Library

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