Page 6 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

Mette naudib raamatut suvises vabaõhu-lugemispesas. Foto Kadi Kreis.

Whether or not a person has obtained formal literacy seems simple: one either can or cannot
read, can or cannot write. The level of skills is determined by the number of mistakes made.
If it goes beyond a certain level, the text read or written is incomprehensible, in other words
the skill is absent. Perfect flawless literacy is an ideal, aspired to by teachers and
philologists, however today we rather talk about emergent literacy. This emerged in the
1960s (see e.g. Mary Clay 1967), and was scientifically proved by several studies in the
1980s. Emergent literacy considers literacy as a competence, elements of which begin
forming in very young children (e.g. how to place a book correctly in front of them, find a
price tag on a product, recognise the first letter of their name)) but development of which
is a continuous process encompassing their entire life.

This book uses the term ‘literacy environment’. Articles, books and research papers in
English also use terms such as ‘language rich environment’, ‘language and literacy rich
environment’, and ‘print rich environment’. In principle they all mean the same – an
environment which supports early literacy development in children.