ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines oral discourse styles, particularly those associated with domains of knowledge, and explores their relationships to academic uses of written texts. It analyzes the kinds of intertextual relations and cross-referencing that occur among children, developmentally, as they become literate in schools. The book conveys the ingenious strategies that primary caretakers use and the will power they have to resolve home-school differences in oral language and reading practices. It also shows how development and use of conjunctions in oral language relates to their use in processing written language as children transition from narrative to expository texts. The book reports on children's collaborative interpretations of artworks and the challenge children face when "writing" visual texts within the texts of their lives. It suggests the representations of models may have a viable place in the visual arts.
