Abstract
The acquisition of reading skill does not begin with formal instruction in school. Throughout the preschool years, most children in Western societies are subjected to a great deal of informal literacy socialization. Although a majority of children enter school as nonreaders in a traditional sense, they often display surprisingly well-developed concepts of the nature and the function of written language. A skill component, however, also is involved in reading literacy, which does not easily seem to develop spontaneously in the natural ecology of a child, but which, in many cases, seems to require explicit teaching for its development. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of the important steps preschool children seem to take on the route to literacy and to review some empirical studies that especially reveal the critical importance of phonological awareness in reading acquisition.
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Lundberg, I., Høien, T. (1991). Initial Enabling Knowledge and Skills in Reading Acquisition: Print Awareness and Phonological Segmentation. In: Sawyer, D.J., Fox, B.J. (eds) Phonological Awareness in Reading. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 28. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3010-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3010-6_3
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