This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

Preschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the relation among reading readiness achievement, three instructional programs in personal writing, and achievement in personal writing of first-grade children. The 140 white, middle class first graders participating in the study were taught in one of three programs: (1) the Initial Alphabet…