This study was designed to investigate the development of a 5-year-old child's language and literacy development in English and Chinese within a 10-week tutoring context where the primary materials were wordless picture books. Storytelling in English and Chinese were the primary activities in each session. Extended activities included labeling,…

This longitudinal interpretive case study documents the role and significance of one preschooler's name in deepening her understanding of written language. Findings highlight the importance of an authentic, purposeful, literacy-rich, supportive environment for children, that provides them time to invent, predict, and guess how written language…

Two series of case studies were carried out following a multiple baseline design across individuals. The first series of eight studies included 4- to 5-year-old Dutch kindergarten children, and the second series examined 5- to 6-year-old kindergarten children. Each child wrote approximately 16 stories in the natural classroom environment over a…

A ethnographic study examined the ways a young child's mind grasps the idea of the written word. The 5-year-old subject, called "Craig" in this article, had an unending thirst for print, read at the second grade level, and had fluent speech and vocabulary. Craig was followed over the previous 8-month period from the time he first gained…

Used multiple case studies to examine the writing of eight second graders in a dual curriculum school with Hebrew as an additional language. Findings revealed some letter and directional reversals, mostly conventional word boundaries, and invented spellings in both languages. Evidence suggests that learning to write in an additional language is an…

Noting that children's perceptions of literacy and of themselves as learners differ from those of adults, this book documents how Sarah, from the ages of 2 to 5 years, understood literacy and invented reading and writing for herself. Numerous reading and writing samples in the book, organized around broad research questions, present Sarah as an…

Discusses the developmental aspects of the relationship between speech and print and examines the debate as to whether first-grade students acquire phonemic awareness by reading and writing the language or whether that awareness is best arrived at by direct teaching of phonics. Presents case study of one first grader's literacy development. (ET)

Case study reports on the use of language experience and a natural approach to learning languages in a dual-language (Spanish-English) kindergarten class. Descriptions of student writing activities in the classroom illustrate the process of literacy development in the first and second languages. The importance of trained bilingual teachers and…