Page 95 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

Supporting children’ s meta-language skills

(awareness of the language)

Learning to read is accompanied by becoming aware of the language, grasping that a written

text can be spelled out and a spoken text can be written up. This is where symbols are used

to note language features – words, syllables or sounds. Human history has seen various
alphabets, syllabary, or pictography. Depending on the writing system, a child needs to

understand what words are and which symbols correspond to them, what syllables are and
their corresponding symbols, what the sounds are and which letters are used.

In emergent literacy an aspect sometimes overlooked is that knowledge about the language

is just one aspect and how to use the language is equally important. Adults might think that

first you need to learn letters, enunciation, spelling and elementary reading and only then
move on to various texts, reading at first and then writing them. It might be quite different

from a child’s perspective. The child may obtain knowledge about the use of language and

text in parallel with language knowledge or even earlier, even a young child who does not
know all letters yet, is able to compose news, invitations, complaints and poems. Even if the

child does it all as part of play, through such activities they learn and perpetuate knowledge
about functions of literacy.

There have been long discussions worldwide on how reading actually begins and how to

best teach it. Today the view is that knowing the letters, understanding letter-sound

connection and a rich vocabulary are all necessary. Children’s literacy evolves differently -
some begin with a letter, sound and syllable, and some begin with writing a few words and

then arrive at letters and sounds. It is even possible to begin with a whole text, for example,
if the child knows “The Egg” book in Estonian by heart, it is possible to start looking for

words “EGG, MUM or GIRL.