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Home Grown for Reading: Parental Contributions to Young Children’s
Emergent Literacy and Word Recognition
Mary Ann Evans and Deborah Shaw
University of Guelph
This article provides an integrative review of key aspects of emergent literacy and specific home
activities that empirical research has shown to support their development. Given the importance of word
recognition in reading development, home contributions to word recognition as well as to four areas of
emergent literacy that contribute to word recognition are highlighted. These include phonological
awareness, letter knowledge, print concepts, and vocabulary. Particular attention is devoted to the activity
of shared book reading to outline its different facets, changing nature, and potential impact on emergent
literacy and word recognition skill.
Keywords: emergent literacy, home literacy environment, shared book reading
About a half a century ago—a phrase that conveys just how
much our conception has changed— children were given “reading
readiness tests” at school entrance to assess whether they were
“ready” for the new initiative of learning to read. About 20 years
ago, in concert with views of child development as a constructivist
process, this conception began to change toward an understanding
of learning to read as a process that starts much earlier in life and
that is based upon a variety of foundational skills acquired before
children enter formal schooling. The term emergent literacy,
launched by Teale and Sulzby (1986) in their edited volume, and
brought to life in Clay’s (1993) observational studies of young
children, was introduced to refer to this conception. More recently,
it has come to refer to the skills and reading-like behaviours that
are developmental precursors to their conventional and more ad-
vanced counterparts.
The view that the home environment in which children grow
plays a substantial role in their literacy development is nicely
illustrated by a large-scale study of twins completed by Petrill,
Deater-Deckard, Schatschneider, and Davis (2005). Here, family
environment characteristics were associated with children’s read-
ing outcome beyond what could be explained by genes shared by
parents and children. The purpose of this review article is to detail
key activities of the home environment provided by parents to
young children that are predictive of reading development in
general and, more specifically, of aspects of emergent literacy
skills contributing to word recognition skill—phonological ability,
alphabetic knowledge, concepts of print, and vocabulary. Given
the salience of shared book reading as a home activity, a separate
section is devoted to its different facets, changing nature, and
potential effects. To provide a background for why these specific
topics have been selected, a brief outline follows directly below of
what is meant by emergent literacy and of the transition from
emergent literacy to conventional word recognition.
Emergent Literacy and Word Recognition
In explicating the term emergent literacy, Whitehurst and Loni-
gan (1998) distinguished between “inside-out” and “outside-in”
knowledge. The first refers to information relied on within the
printed word to translate print into phonological representations or
spoken words (i.e., to decode), and conversely to translate spoken
words into print. This includes alphabetic knowledge (letters and
the sounds they represent) and phonological awareness (awareness
and ability to reflect on the sounds in spoken words). The sec-
ond— outside-in— entails information from outside the printed
word to help the reader derive meaning from it, and includes
domains such as semantic and syntactic knowledge, knowledge of
narrative structure, and broader conceptual understanding. Simi-
larly, Scarborough (2001) conceptualised skilled reading to be
comprised of two strands of underlying skills. The first consists of
word recognition skills that include phonological awareness, de-
coding, and sight recognition of words. The second consists of
language comprehension skills entailing vocabulary, syntax, back-
ground knowledge of facts and concepts; knowledge about print
concepts and genres; and verbal reasoning skills. The distinction in
both articles parallels a “simple view” of reading put forth by
Gough and Tumner (1986) in which reading is conceptualised as
the product of decoding and comprehension, decoding being the
act of translating print to sound and in doing so recognising spoken
words in print and their associated meanings and usages.
Several stage theories have been put forward for the develop-
ment of word recognition, many of which are consistent to some
degree with that of Ehri (1999). In the first stage called prealpha-
betic, logographic, selective-cue, or paired-associate, children
identify words based on their overall shape, context, or the back-
ground on which they appear. During the second partial alphabetic
stage, also referred to as the visual recognition, or rudimentary
alphabetic phase, children use some letters— often the first and/or
last in words—in combination with their limited knowledge of
Mary Ann Evans and Deborah Shaw, University of Guelph, Ontario,
Canada.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary
Ann Evans, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph,
Ontario, N1G 2W1. E-mail: evans@psy.uoguelph.ca
Canadian Psychology Copyright 2008 by the Canadian Psychological Association
2008, Vol. 49, No. 2, 89–95 0708-5591/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0708-5591.49.2.89
89
letters to guess at words. In the third full alphabetic stage, named
by others as the spelling-sound, or cipher reading stage, a more
complete knowledge of letter–sound correspondences allows chil-
dren to more accurately decode words and store sight words to
help them read new words by analogy. Finally, in the fourth phase,
the consolidated alphabetic phase, children consolidate their
knowledge of recurring letter patterns and words through repeated
exposure and experience to read more efficiently. In fact, Share
(1999) has proposed that once a certain level of skill in phonolog-
ically recoding words has been reached, it becomes a self-teaching
mechanism in which children are able to create at least an approx-
imation of how words are pronounced, recognise those word as a
part of their vocabulary, and develop the word-specific ortho-
graphic representations necessary for skilled reading. Accordingly,
attention is rightly directed at phonological awareness, alphabetic
knowledge (letter name knowledge and letter sound knowledge),
concepts of print and printed words, and vocabulary in the devel-
opment of reading skill. Each of these areas and research support-
ing a linkage between home activities and their development is
presented below.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness, the conscious awareness of linguistic
units (syllables, rhymes, phonemes) of spoken language, is widely
accepted to play an important role in learning to read (see reviews
by Adams, 1990; Castles & Coltheart, 2004; National Reading
Panel, 2000; Scarborough, 2001). As outlined in these reviews,
longitudinal and correlational studies have indicated that phono-
logical awareness is concurrently and predictively related to read-
ing performance after controlling for confounding variables, such
as intelligence, socioeconomic status, and general language ability,
and children with reading difficulties perform less well on phono-
logical awareness tasks than normal age-matched or reading level-
matched peers.
Phonological awareness appears to develop from larger to
smaller sound units, with conscious awareness of syllables and
rhymes preceding that of single phonemes, and from initial to
ending to medial positions in spoken words. Controversy exists
regarding which aspects of phonological awareness are more im-
portant (see Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Goswami, 2002), with
some suggesting that rhyming is less critical than phonemic aware-
ness (i.e., awareness of individual phonemes; Blaiklock, 2004;
Hatcher & Hulme, 1999; Muter et al., 1998; Wagner et al., 1997).
Bryant (2002) has argued that rhyme awareness nonetheless may
be an important developmental precursor. If so, parents who tell
nursery rhymes to, read rhyming poetry to, and sing songs with
their children, encouraging them to fill in the rhyming words, may
facilitate the beginnings of this skill. Some support for this notion
is provided by Bryant, Bradley, McLean, and Crossland (1989)
who found that children who knew more nursery rhymes were
better at rhyming tasks and later more successful in reading. In
addition, Evans, Shaw, Bell, Moretti, and Fox (2002) found that
the earlier parents began reading books to their children, the better
children were on phonemic awareness tests after controlling for
cognitive abilities. A possible explanation is that books for young
children are often written in rhyming stanzas with strong rhythmic
structure in the syllables.
Alphabetic Knowledge
The predictive relationship between phonemic awareness and
reading is not simple, however, in that some letter knowledge may
be necessary for phonemic awareness (e.g., Blaiklock, 2004; Wag-
ner et al., 1997; Wimmer, Landerl, Linortner, & Hummer, 1991).
In addition, its relationship to subsequent word recognition is
sizeably reduced after controlling for letter knowledge (e.g., Cas-
tles & Coltheart, 2004; Evans, Bell, Shaw, Moretti, & Page, 2006;
MacMillan, 2002). In fact, the meta-analyses by the National
Reading Panel (2000) of the effectiveness of phonological aware-
ness training programmes led to the conclusion that although
phonological awareness is important for learning to read, it alone
it is not sufficient. Rather letter knowledge must accompany it,
with programmes that combine phonological and letter training
being more effective.
In addition, young children’s letter knowledge, both names and
sounds, before school entry and in the early primary grades, is
itself predictive of future reading achievement (see reviews by
Adams, 1990; Foulin, 2005; Scarborough, 1998). One mechanism
for this relationship may be that high letter knowledge, especially
letter naming fluency, reflects the thoroughness and confidence
with which letter names are known and degree to which letters and
other visual stimuli can be labelled automatically and effortlessly
(Adams, 1990). A second is that letter names are closely related to
their sounds, which may facilitate learning grapheme-phoneme
correspondences and decoding (Treiman, Tincoff, Rodriguez,
Mouzaki, & Francis, 1998).
During the preschool years, letter knowledge appears to
progress from reciting the alphabet, to printing and recognising
one’s own name, to identifying, labelling and printing letters of the
alphabet (Bialystok, 1992; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; Ma-
son, 1980). Many parents report explicitly teaching their children
the names and/or sounds of letters and how to print them, and
provide their children with alphabet blocks, books, and friezes. For
example in Haney and Hill’s (2004) study, 71% parents of children
ages 3 to 5 reported teaching letter names and 65% reported
teaching letter sounds. Similarly Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans, and
Jared (2006) found that parents reported involving their children in
printing their names and learning or practising letter names and
sounds as frequently as reading them storybooks. The former
activities clustered with others entailing practising reading and
writing. The extent to which parents involved their children in this
cluster of activities was concurrently related to children’s under-
standing of the printed forms of words, even after controlling for
children’s age and independent pursuit of these same activities.
Likewise studies contrasting the frequency of informal print ex-
posure through shared book reading with the frequency of parent-
reported teaching about print (Evans, Shaw, & Bell, 2000; Se´-
ne´chal, 2006; Se´ne´chal & LeFevre, 2002; Se´ne´chal, LeFevre,
Thomas, & Daley, 1998) demonstrated that informal print expo-
sure was unrelated to letter knowledge and subsequent reading
skill in first grade, but reports of teaching about print were posi-
tively predictive. Only later, once children had developed the
ability to decode words with relative ease, did informal print
exposure (and as will be seen below, vocabulary development
associated with it) show any relationship.
Formal and informal print activities need not be mutually ex-
clusive. Justice and Ezell (2002) effectively demonstrated that
90 EVANS AND SHAW
storybooks can be read to children both for enjoyment and mean-
ing as well as with a print focus, such as asking children to find the
letters in their name on the page or with a certain shape, and
naming letters. Moreover, they showed that reading to children
with such extratextual comments focussed on print resulted in
children making greater gains in alphabet knowledge, in print
concepts, and in recognising words within picture contexts, than
reading books with extratextual comments focussed on the pic-
tures.
In addition, certain kinds of children’s books may be viewed as
“print salient” via the prominence of the print within the book. The
most notable are alphabet books. These often contain an upper and
lowercase letter, brief text, and an accompanying illustration of an
item or cluster of items whose name begins with the letter and/or
letter sound, such as “C is for” for example “chimpanzee,” “cat” or
“centipede.” Also included are books with simple printed signs
such as “STOP” or words such as “ZZZZZZ” embedded in the
pictures or enlarged in the text.
Alphabet books may be traced back to horn books which appear
hanging from children’s waists in paintings of the 15th century.
Horn books displayed the alphabet in printed or manuscript letters
behind a thin transparent covering of horn, hence their name. As
printed materials became more widespread in the late 18th century,
horn books were replaced by folded sheets with the letters and
accompanying illustrations (called battledoors) and still later by
alphabet books (Kevill-Davies, 1991). Alphabet books are often
the first type of book purchased by parents (Zeece, 1996) and are
commonly found in homes. For example, in the study by Levy et
al. (2006), parents reported reading alphabet books with their
children three times a month and children looking at them on their
own an additional three times a month.
Small nobservations of parents and their preschool-age children
reading a variety of books together by Smolkin and Yaden (1992)
and Yaden, Smolkin, and MacGillivray (1993) showed that, whilst
parent and child questions and comments about the print were rare,
they were more frequent when reading an alphabet book. Simi-
larly, Stadler and McEvoy (2003) found that print-focussed com-
ments were more common with an alphabet book, but only for
normally developing and not language-impaired children. Bus and
van IJzendoorn (1988) also observed that with alphabet books,
parent comments were more likely to include naming letters,
helping children to recognise sounds in words, and connecting
letters to words. Important to note, however, these behaviours were
more evident when children had higher levels of emergent literacy.
Thus, these studies suggest that parents are more likely to empha-
sise letters and letter sounds rather than the pictures in alphabet
books when they estimate that their children will benefit from
these comments.
A limited set of classroom research (Brabham, Murray, &
Bowden, 2006; Greenewald & Kulig, 1995; Murray, Stahl, & Ivey,
1996) suggests that alphabet books may foster alphabetic knowl-
edge. Findings from the latter study were also suggestive of gains
in phonological awareness. In this study, Murray, Stahl and Ivey
assigned three junior kindergarten classroom to one of three con-
ditions over a 3-week period—reading four conventional alphabet
books showing letters and corresponding illustrations, versus fea-
turing letter names in the text, versus picture story books. As
would be expected with the passage of time and the curriculum, all
groups gained in alphabetic, print knowledge, and phonological
awareness. Children who read the conventional alphabet books
made greater gains in phonological awareness than those who read
the letter-name books, but did not differ from those who read the
storybooks. Unfortunately, however, there was no control for
curriculum to untangle the effects of the different kinds of books
from the classrooms in which each was embedded. Similar gains
were also observed by Brabham et al. (2006) when contrasting
teachers who read alphabet books with an emphasis on phonemes
of the letters versus an emphasis on the meanings of the objects
associated with the letter sound.
There is also recent evidence from a study by Evans and
Saint-Aubin (2008) that the physical layout of some alphabet
books may be helpful in drawing children’s attention to print. They
tracked the eye-movements of preschool age children reading an
alphabet book having a simple illustration, a single printed word,
and a large letter on each page. Whilst nonreaders attended pri-
marily to the illustrations, they nonetheless fixated the alphabet
letter and printed word more than would be expected for nonread-
ers. Thus, alphabet books, in themselves and in interactions with
parents who highlight the names, shapes, and sounds of letters, are
likely a valuable resource for developing and consolidating alpha-
betic knowledge.
Print Concepts
In the course of informal learning experiences in the preschool
years, children also acquire concepts of print (Clay, 1993) and
concepts of printed words, such as what constitutes letters and
words as opposed to squiggles, pictures, and numbers; the direc-
tion in which letters are sequenced and words are read; and how
printed words are separated by spaces. (See review by Tolchinsky-
Landsmann, 2003.) For example, children ages 2 to 4 initially draw
to “print.” Gradually, their printing, but not their drawings, begins
to resemble features of writing with smaller combinations of
shapes in a linear sequence separated by spaces (Levin & Bus,
2003). Between 3 and 6, children come to regard pictures and
shapes as not readable (Bialystok, 1992; Levy et al., 2006), and to
identify words as having strings of letters as opposed to single
letters (Landsmann & Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Pick, Unze,
Brownell, Drozdal, & Hopmann, 1978).
Scarborough’s (1998) review found a mean correlation of .46
between concepts of print and later reading achievement. It may be
that explicitly talking about print and pointing to words whilst
reading to children helps them to develop this understanding, but
supporting research is scant. What has been demonstrated to be of
benefit, however, is the activity of engaging the child in writing.
Young children often pretend to and attempt to write, and parents
join in to model how to print letters and words (Saracho, 1999;
Tudge & Putnam, 1997). Aram and Biron (2004) showed that joint
writing interventions with children ages 3 to 5 years were more
effective than joint reading interventions in fostering a variety of
print specific knowledge including letter knowledge, orthographic
awareness, and word writing. Moreover, phonological awareness
also improved. Shared reading and shared writing activities fre-
quently coexist in homes and thus it is noteworthy that Aram and
Levin (2002) found shared writing activities to be predictive of
alphabetic skill after partialing out home general environment and
frequency of storybook reading. This points to child–parent writ-
91
SPECIAL ISSUE: PARENTAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO EMERGENT LITERACY
ing as valuable activity distinct from shared reading for the devel-
opment of print knowledge.
Shared Book Reading
There is perhaps no other activity that has the potential to
seamlessly meld together and foster enjoyment, language, and
literacy than shared book reading, and an ever increasing body of
research has focussed on the nature of and benefits of what
Pellegrini (1991) referred to it as “the literacy event par excel-
lence” (p. 380). In their review of the shared book reading re-
search, Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) concluded that typically
43% to 75% of preschoolers are read to on a daily basis or more.
In the present authors’ database of 659 parents in Southwestern
Ontario mainly, 72% reported reading five or more days a week to
their child. In low-income families in the United States, about half
of children under age 4 are read to daily (Dickinson & Tabors,
2001; Raikes et al., 2006).
Not surprisingly, much research has attempted to establish a
connexion between the quantity of reading to children and their
language and literacy skills. Meta-analyses by both Bus, van
IJzendoorn, and Pelligrini (1995) and Scarborough and Dobrich
(1994) concluded that time spent in shared book reading at home
accounted for 8% of the variance in children’s reading achieve-
ment, which according to the first article was substantial, and
according to the second, modest. Scarborough and Dobrich’s
meta-analysis did reveal, however, a slightly stronger effect on
children’s language development.
Shared Reading and Vocabulary Development
Story book reading exposes children to more linguistically com-
plex language and varied vocabulary than is found during toy play,
mealtime, routine caregiving, and prime time television. Debary-
she (1993) and Raikes et al. (2006) reported that joint book reading
at home is highly correlated with receptive vocabulary, with the
age of onset being a robust variable compared to the amount.
Others have noted that parents actively teach and test vocabulary
whilst reading to their toddlers and preschoolers, and use more
complex speech and cognitively higher-demand questions as chil-
dren get older (e.g., Beals & Tabors, 1995; Se´ne´chal, Cornell, &
Broda, 1995; Snow & Goldfield, 1983). Experimental research
with preschoolers in which novel words have been introduced in
books read to them has also shown positive influences on vocab-
ulary development (e.g., Biemiller & Boote, 2006; Elley, 1989;
Ewers & Brownson, 1999; Se´ne´chal & Cornell, 1993); although it
should be noted that studies have dealt primarily with the acqui-
sition of new words rather than greater depth of meaning in known
words. Nonetheless, having some representation of a spoken word
in long-term memory allows children to match written words as
they decode them to words they have heard and know.
When the characteristics of experimental studies showing gains
in vocabulary from story book reading are examined, some com-
bination of the following is found: (a) the same books were read at
least three times; (b) there were multiple occurrences of each novel
word in the text; (c) the novel words were clearly illustrated by
pictures and specifically pointed to by the reader; (d) they were
important to the text; (e) their meaning was clear from the context,
picture, or adult’s explanation; (f) they were largely nouns; (g) the
child was asked to repeat the words, retell the story, and/or engage
in activities related to the words’ meanings. Under some combi-
nation of the above, about 20% of the novel words in storybooks
were learned.
These features, then, would appear to be good guidelines for
parents to follow in tailoring shared book reading to maximise this
activity’s benefit on vocabulary development. Regrettably, Pursoo,
Evans, and Shaw (2005) and Tabors, Beals, and Weizman (2001)
observed that when unusual words are encountered during reading,
most parents of older children in kindergarten through grade two
children do not pause to explain them, and children rarely ask for
clarification. This may explain why Beals and Tabors (1995) found
no relation between rare words in book reading conversations and
children’s receptive vocabulary scores. However, clear accompa-
nying pictures in books may compensate to some extent for this, in
that children appear to process the pictures in concert with the text
(Evans, Saint-Aubin, Roy-Charland, & Allen, 2006) and pictures
play a facilitative role in young children’s comprehension of the
storyline in books (Lesgold, Levin, Shimron, & Guttman, 1975).
Explicit explanations should further boost comprehension.
Shared Reading and Word Recognition
Studies monitoring children’s eye movements of preschool and
kindergarten children have shown that without the ability to read
the printed text, these children are primarily listeners during shared
book reading, looking rarely at the print (Evans & Saint-Aubin,
2005; Evans, Williamson, & Pursoo, 2008; Justice, Skibbe, Can-
ning & Lankford, 2005; Roy-Charland, Saint-Aubin & Evans,
2007). At these ages, parents invite nonreaders into the role of
reader through books with predictable text in which the child
“reads” on the basis of context and picture clues, previous knowl-
edge, and familiar, recurring grammatical patterns. Shared reading
with preschoolers, then, would be expected to have modest effects
on word reading development, matching the conclusion of Scar-
borough and Dobrich (1994).
However, as children develop word recognition skills, parents
accord more of the reader role to their children and actively coach
their children in decoding the print. More than 20 years ago,
Hewison and Tizard (1980) reported that mothers who regularly
listened to their children read had children who scored signifi-
cantly higher on tests of reading achievement compared to mothers
who did not. This finding was experimentally replicated by Tizard,
Schofield, and Hewison (1982) who found that six- and seven-
year-old children whose parents regularly listened to them read
made greater reading gains than control children who received
teacher assistance or no assistance at all, gains that were main-
tained three years later (Hewison, 1988). Whilst some of these
gains were likely due to increased time-on-task reading, they also
were likely due to the substantial coaching that occurs when
parents listen to children read, helping them to decode unfamiliar
words encountered in the text.
This parental coaching has been clearly documented in several
studies (Evans, Barraball, & Eberle, 1998; Evans, Moretti, Shaw,
& Fox, 2003; Hannon, Jackson, & Weinberger, 1986; Lancy,
Draper, & Boyce, 1989; Mansell, Evans, & Hamilton-Hulak, 2005;
Stolz & Fischel, 2003; Tracey & Young, 2002). These studies have
shown that parents appear to be sensitive to their child’s develop-
ing skill, adjusting the way they respond to children’s reading
92 EVANS AND SHAW
errors or miscues. As children move from kindergarten through
grade two and develop more advanced skill, parents are more
likely to draw attention to the letters on which an error was made,
encourage decoding via phonics, and ask the child to try again; and
are less likely to offer picture and context clues (Evans et al., 1998;
2003; Mansell et al., 2005; Stolz & Fischel, 2003). Exactly what a
parent should best do has not been well established, because most
studies have failed to account for children’s initial reading level
when examining the effects of different styles of parent feedback
over time. A recent exception to this (Evans, Mansell, & Shaw,
2006) showed that, after controlling for their earlier reading skill,
prolonging the provision of context and picture clues across kin-
dergarten and grade one negatively predicted children’s word
identification skill in grades one and two amongst both skilled and
less skilled readers. This mirrors studies noted above in which
specifically encouraging the young child to attend to and process
print and try to write benefits reading skill development. However,
carefully controlled experimental manipulations of parent coach-
ing in shared book reading have yet to be published.
Concluding Comments
The material presented above demonstrates the valuable role of
parents in “growing” prerequisite skills for children’s reading
development. The review has focussed on specific home activities,
falling within the general concept of family literacy, that research
has been able to connect to key areas predictive of reading skill
(phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge,
vocabulary, and word recognition). These include shared book
reading (alphabet and rhyming books, books that expand vocabu-
lary, and text just beyond the child’s independent reading level in
which the parent can be reading coach), teaching letter names and
sounds, drawing the child’s attention to print and its form and
purpose, and parent– child writing activities. Identifying specific
activities may appear reductionistic, and it should be emphasised
that such activities likely work together. Also, the affective side
must not be forgotten. Literacy interactions, whether reading a
book, printing, conversing, or teaching, should be enjoyable. In
fact, parents from junior kindergarten through third grade regard
fostering enjoyment and their relationship with their child as the
top-rated goals for shared book reading (Audet, Evans, William-
son, & Reynolds, 2008). Children who experience both enjoyment
and positive regard in combination with direction, coaching, and
correction will likely more readily attend to and internalise the
information and skills that parents attempt to teach them, and
develop the interest and motivation to sustain their learning. Sim-
ilarly, parents who incorporate the literacy activities highlighted in
this review frequently and naturally will better have an opportunity
to observe their child’s skill level and fine-tune their interactions to
increase child interest and participation.
Re´ sume´
Cet article est une e´valuation inte´gre´e des principaux aspects de la
lite´racie e´mergente et des activite´s a` la maison qui tendent, selon
la recherche empirique, a` favoriser leur de´veloppement. Vu
l’importance de la reconnaissance des mots dans l’apprentissage
de la lecture, on y souligne l’apport des activite´s a` la maison lie´es
a` la reconnaissance des mots et a` quatre volets de la lite´racie
e´mergente, qui contribuent eux-meˆmes a` la reconnaissance des
mots. La reconnaissance phonologique, la connaissance des lettres,
les concepts d’impression et le vocabulaire en font partie. Les
activite´s de lecture avec un parent font l’objet d’une attention
particulie`re dans cet article. On y pre´sente leurs diffe´rentes fa-
cettes, leur nature changeante et leurs re´percussions potentielles
sur la lite´racie e´mergente et sur les compe´tences lie´es a` la recon-
naissance des mots.
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Received October 15, 2007
Revision received January 25, 2008
Accepted February 14, 2008 䡲
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