Literacy development of a preschooler: an exemplary case

The importance of older children’s literacy development has been recognized and studied for years, the issue of emergent literacy and young children’s literacy development has been seriously addressed. Debates have raged over the nature and nurture of young children’s literacy learning and development, with considerable research and theory being reported. It is seen that some children and even some college students are experiencing literacy problems. Literacy development of preschoolers has received attention of teachers, administrators, researchers, and decision-makers. They started working on emergent literacy; they have focused on how to assess young children’s literacy development, whether it is appropriate to include literacy education in preschool curricula and what can be done for better literacy development of young children. The current study is an inquiry-based case study, which adopted a qualitative interpretivist paradigm to describe the literacy development of an English Second Language preschooler, Mary. The study utilized Clay`s Observation Survey, which included “Concepts about Print,” “Writing Vocabulary,” “Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words,” “Word Reading,” and “Letter Identification” and two “Running Records of Text Reading” tasks. The importance of observing sensitively, recording progress, and interacting with a child supportively to achieve forward movement is emphasized. Clay`s Observation Survey showed that although Mary is very young, her behaviors are like those of mature readers and writers

Case study ,

Observation survey ,

Preschool ,

Literacy ,