ABSTRACT
This chapter presents theoretical ideas about the nature of the transition that children make from emergent to conventional literacy and about how they use oral and written language in literacy episodes during this period. The chapter is written from the perspective of emergent literacy. Research has shown convincingly that young children know much about reading and writing long before they become conventional readers and writers (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1988a, in press; Clay, 1966; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Mason & Allen, 1986; Sulzby, 1983, 1994; Sulzby & Teale, 1991; Teale, 1987). What they know, however, is qualitatively different from the knowledge of a literate adult. Some researchers (Barnhart, 1988; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982) have shown that school instruction that assumes an adult, conventional set of understandings about print begins for many children long before they in fact hold such understandings. Such instruction ignores children's emergent literacy development and the nature of their transitions into conventional literacy.
