This study examined code-related and oral language precursors to reading in a longitudinal study of 626 children from preschool through 4th grade. Code-related precursors, including print concepts and phonological awareness, and oral language were assessed in preschool and kindergarten. Reading accuracy and reading comprehension skills were examined in 1st through 4th grades. Results demonstrated that (a) the relationship between code-related precursors and oral language is strong during preschool; (b) there is a high degree of continuity over time of both code-related and oral language abilities; (c) during early elementary school, reading ability is predominantly determined by the level of print knowledge and phonological awareness a child brings from kindergarten; and (d) in later elementary school, reading accuracy and reading comprehension appear to be 2 separate abilities that are influenced by different sets of skills.

Emergent literacy consists of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are developmental precursors to reading and writing. This article offers a preliminary typology of children's emergent literacy skills, a review of the evidence that relates emergent literacy to reading, and a review of the evidence for linkage between children's emergent literacy environments and the development of emergent literacy skills. We propose that emergent literacy consists of at least two distinct domains: inside-out skills (e.g., phonological awareness, letter knowledge) and outside-in skills (e.g., language, conceptual knowledge). These different domains are not the product of the same experiences and appear to be influential at different points in time during reading acquisition. Whereas outside-in skills are associated with those aspects of children's literacy environments typically measured, little is known about the origins of inside-out skills. Evidence from interventions to enhance emergent literacy suggests that relatively intensive and multifaceted interventions are needed to improve reading achievement maximally. A number of successful preschool interventions for outside-in skills exist, and computer-based tasks designed to teach children inside-out skills seem promising. Future research directions include more sophisticated multidimensional examination of emergent literacy skills and environments, better integration with reading research, and longer-term evaluation of preschool interventions. Policy implications for emergent literacy intervention and reading education are discussed.

We experimentally assessed a 1-month, home-based intervention, designed to optimize parental reading of picture books to young children. Parents in the experimental group received instructions to increase their rates of open-ended questions, function/attribute questions, and expansions; to respond appropriately to children's attempts to answer these questions; and to decrease their frequency of straight reading and questions that could be answered by pointing. Control-group parents were instructed to read in their customary fashion. All families audiotaped their reading sessions at home. Analysis of these tapes demonstrated that the experimental-group parents complied with the intervention instructions. Children in the experimental group scored significantly higher than children in the control group on standardized posttests of expressive language ability. On the basis of analysis of audiotapes, children in the experimental group also had a higher mean length of utterance (MLU), a higher frequency of phrases, and a lower frequency of single words. Follow-up 9 months after the completion of treatment disclosed continued, although statistically diminished, differences between the two groups.Picture book story time offers a potentially rich opportunity for young children to learn language. Wells (1985a) found that approximately 5% of the daily speech of a sample of 24-montholds occurred in story-time settings. In addition to being a setting in which children are prone to talk, story time also appears to evoke tutorial behavior from mothers that varies across dimensions such as social class. Ninio and Bruner (1978) studied a single middle-class mother-child pair over a 10-month period, with no special instructions given with regard to book reading. The mother labeled objects most frequently during picture book reading, with 75.6% of all instances of labeling occurring in that context. In addition, the mother provided consistent and informative feedback for the child's attempts at labeling (all incorrect labels were corrected, and 81% of the child's correct labels were reinforced). Similar effects have been found in case studies by Snow and Goldfield (1983) and Moerk and Moerk (1979). Ninio (1980) examined social class differences and found that lower-class mothers were less likely than middle-class mothers to engage in a number of potentially instructive behaviors during story time. Correspondingly, lowerclass children had smaller productive vocabularies than middle-class children.As one might expect, the focus of the speech that parents direct to their children (child-directed speech) during picture book reading changes with the age and linguistic sophistication

The effects of an interactive book reading program were assessed with children from low-income families who attended subsidized day-care centers in New York. The children entered the program with language development in standard English vocabulary and expression that was about 10 months behind chronological age on standardized tests. Children were pretested and assigned randomly within classrooms to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) a school plus home condition in which the children were read to by their teachers and their parents, (b) a school condition in which children were read to only by teachers, and (c) a control condition in which children engaged in play activities under the supervision of their teachers. Training of adult readers was based on a self-instructional video. The intervention lasted for 6 weeks, at which point children were posttested on several standardized measures oflanguage ability that had been used as pretests. These assessments were repeated at a 6month follow-up. Educationally and statistically significant effects of the reading intervention were obtained at posttest and follow-up on measures of expressive vocabulary.According to the 1991 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching report, Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation, 35% of children in the United States enter kindergarten unprepared to learn, with most lacking the vocabulary and sentence structure crucial to school success. Although there are some problems with the methods of this report and inherent difficulties in dichotomizing school readiness, there is no doubt that there are very large individual differences in early educational achievement that have long-term consequences for children and society (Alexander & Entwisle, 1988;Stevenson & Newman, 1986).Why are so many children, particularly those from low-income families, deficient in the skills that are critical to school readiness? Children's preschool experience with books may play an important role. Adams (1990, p. 85) estimated that a typical middle-class child enters first grade with 1,000 to 1,700 hr of one-on-one picture book reading, whereas the correspond-

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