Introduction: another account of learning to read?

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the early stages of learning to read: the acquisition of early oral and silent reading abilities. The overriding aim is to account for children's learning in homes and in classrooms. The book explains how effective learners actually learn to read. It describes real environments and explains their effects. The book takes reading phenomena from home and school settings and, uses concepts which are applicable to both settings, explains how they occur. It shows how learning activities arise from the problems which readers face. The book analyses how multifaceted environments can influence learning activities and applies the concepts to the available descriptions of home and school environments. Learning to read has psychological, social and political significance. This is why the attempts by psychological researchers to describe and explain the processes of that learning are tremendously important.