The Onset of Literacy addresses one of the main questions in the field of reading research - why the acquisition of skills in reading and writing appears to be so much more difficult than the earlier acquisition of speech communication. As well as posing a major theoretical puzzle, the question has important implications for both instructional practices and ways of dealing with dyslexic children.Research on the reading process has made important progress in recent years, thanks to conceptual and methodological advances in cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology, which have made it possible to deal with complex issues that in the past seemed to defy rational analysis. The Onset of Literacy presents a selective sample of work by major contemporary specialists who focus on current information processing approaches to the reading process and their interface with research on the development of reading and related skills. An introduction by the editor summarizes and places the various contributions within current analyses of reading inspired by the information processing approach.The chapters and their authors are: The Ability to Manipulate Speech Sounds Depends on Knowing Alphabetic Writing, Charles Read, Zhang Yun-Fei, Nie Hong-Yin, and Ding BaoQing. Literacy Training and Speech Segmentation, Jos� Morais, Paul Bertelson, Luz Cary, and Jesus Alegria. Phonological Awareness: The Role of Reading Experience, Virginia A. Mann. Word Recognition in Early Reading: A Review of the Direct and Indirect Access Hypotheses, Roderick W. Barron. The Similarities Between Normal Readers and Developmental and Acquired Dyslexics, Peter Bryant and Lawrence Impey. Language Mechanisms and Reading Disorder: A Modular Approach, Donald Shankweiler and Stephen Crain.Paul Bertelson is Professor of Experimental Psychology and Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Universit� Libre de Bruxelles. The Onset of Literacy is in a series that is derived from special issues of Cognition: International Journal of Cognitive Science, edited by Jacques Mehler. A Bradford Book.

Preschool teachers and early childhood professionals know that storybook reading is important, but they may not know how to maximize its benefits for later reading achievement. This indispensable guide presents research-based techniques for using reading aloud to intentionally and systematically build children's knowledge of print. Simple yet powerful strategies are provided for teaching preschoolers about book and print organization, print meaning, letters, and words, all while sharing engaging, commercially available books. Appendices include a detailed book list and 60 reproducibles that feature activities and prompts keyed to each text.

This invaluable supplementary curriculum meets Reading First criteria and contains numerous classroom-ready activities designed to increase the phonemic awareness and preliteracy skills of preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade students.

Provides research-based data about effective literacy instruction processes.

The purpose of this volume is to present recent research in the field of the acquisition of functional literacy and its precursors. The volume aims to capture the state of the art in this rapidly expanding field. An attempt is made to clarify the vague and often inconsistent definitions of functional literacy from the perspective of development. Cognitive, linguistic, educational, and social factors of literacy development are all taken into account. The volume consists of three subsequent parts. The first part goes into phonological precursors of literacy development. In this part the focus is on the development of early language precursors of of reading and writing. The cultural foundations of these precursors are explored, and their links with reading development are dealt with in detail. Different psycholinguistic approaches are also proposed to explain the occurrence of literacy problems. In the second part, the scope is on the constraints of reading and writing efficiency at the word level and beyond. The acquisition of reading and writing is seen as a result from the interaction between phonological, orthographic, and semantic processes. A crosslinguistic perspective is taken on the role of writing system factors in the acquisition of literacy skills. The final part deals with the role of social and educational factors in literacy acquisition. Starting from a crosscultural perspective, the central issue is how the attainment of functional literacy is dependent on sociocultural variation. The predictors of more advanced levels of literacy development are considered, including foreign language literacy and adult literacy.

Together with Addressing Difficulties in Literacy Development, this reader forms the basis of the Open University's Difficulties in Literacy Development course, and is ideal for similar courses nationally and internationally.