ABSTRACT
The study of language and literacy over time has a long history. The history of child development studies involves three distinct sets that are based on time. Each examines reading and writing and those activities more broadly conceived as literacy and language arts over different units of time. The sets of studies range from a long-term time perspective over multiple years, through a medium-term frame of weeks, months, and years, to a short-term or micro genetic frame of seconds, minutes and hours. The latter two in part owe their features to the older set of studies with the long time frame. So the longer term studies provide an historically and conceptually appropriate introduction for the other two sets.
