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  • Early literacy development : the role of storytelling, joint reading, and symbolic play
    Marjanovič Umek, Ljubica ; Fekonja, Urška
    The latest theories in developmental psychology and psycholinguistics explain early or emergent literacy as a process that begins in the early periods of child development and in which child language ... plays an important role. Vygotsky (1978), whose theory especially highlights the important role of language and culture in child development, understands early literacy as an interconnection of thought and language processes. During the development and learning process, children internalize various aspects of a culture and its sign system, which has developed within the culture and between cultures for centuries. Therefore during infancy, and later during toddlerhood and early childhood, it is important that children have significant exposure to a symbolically rich environment: adult-child social interaction, responsive and sensitive communication and conversation, parents reading to children, joint reading of children's books, and symbolic play. This chapter of the book focuses on the findings of Slovenian studies that examined factors in child language (especially components such as vocabulary, communication skills, metalinguistic awareness, and storytelling) that are also significantly linked with the development of early literacy during early childhood. We explain the effect of preschool teachers systematically reading to children in preschool (reading frequency and quality) on children's language development (general language devlopment and storytelling) and we clarify the importance of free symbolic play (in contrast to routine or plannes preschool activities) for the development of language comprehension and expression among preschool children.Special attention is also directed toward the quality of the family environment (types of parental encouragement and their quality; e.g., the frequency and manner in which parents read to children, the number of children's books in the family, attending cultural events together, familiarizing children with letters and other symbols, characteristics of parents' speech when communicating with children) and how this relates to children's general language development, language comprehension, expression, and storytelling ability.
    Source: Reading : assessment, comprehension and teaching (Str. 131-157)
    Type of material - article, component part ; adult, serious
    Publish date - 2009
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 40357730

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