ABSTRACT
Children enact adult practices such as signing greetings cards, and writing letters and Shopping lists. Slowly and surely they demonstrate an interest not only in the act of writing but also in the form it takes. Like writing, reading has its roots in early experience, but it may or may not be closely related to learning to write. It does not offer any obvious way for learning to read new text. It is in schooling as intervention context that schooling must be seen as an intervention, one made because without it, it is feared, literacy may not be learned, and also because much schooling demands reading and writing to more specific educational purposes than those of the home. It would be a pity if pressure for national assessment of literacy performance were also to stress technical proficiency at the expense of development of understanding and expression, especially in the early years of primary schooling.
