"Emergent Literacy." Final Exam. Part 1

Refers to the literacy skills acquired by children from birth to school age as a result of their interaction with print in a literate society; the term also names the field of study that documents this process.


The term emergent literacy was first used by Marie Clay (1966). Clay was among the firsts to study very young children’s reading and writing “in light of language acquisition research” (Teale and Sulzby xv). From her study of five-year-old preschoolers in New Zealand and her subsequent publications on the topic, she started to create a new category that set itself apart from the “reading readiness” approach that predominated from the 1920s to the 1950s. The supporters of “reading readiness” proposed that in order for a child to receive literacy instruction or be able to make meaning off of print he/she needed to reach maturity, which didn’t happen until the child was six years and six months of “mental age,” according to Morphett and Washburne (1931) (qtd. in Teale and Sulzby x). However, it was not until 1986, when Teale and Sulzby used the term in their book Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading to define the entire field that the name started to be used widely.

Researchers of emergent literacy understand that an individual begins reading and writing as soon as it has “awareness that written language makes senses” (Ferreiro 17) and that written language conveys meaning. Teale and Sulzby indicate that emergent “connotes development rather than stasis; it signifies something in the process of becoming” (xix) thus, in a literate society like ours, a child starts his/her process of becoming literate from the moment it is born. “The acquisition of literacy is best conceptualized a development continuum” (Whitehurst and Lonigan 848), meaning that is an ongoing process without a specific start period. Children that are exposed to and interact with print at an early age learn how books work (flip pages from right to left, direction of print) and start understanding the relation between written text and language by memorizing their favorite stories and asking adults to read to them parts of the stories they cannot identify.
Valencia and Sulzby argue that “emergent literacy is based upon social interactions with important people” but also “with literary products of people” (498), which is why many researchers emphasize on the environment’s influence on the literacy process. One of the recent studies to validate this idea is “Other People’s Words” by Victoria Purcell-Gates. Her documentation of how a mother and her son learn to read gives insight on the influence of culture and environment in the emergent literacy process and questions if all children “learn the same concepts, in the same way (s), to the same extent?” (42).

The literature on emergent literacy has had impact with educators, advocacy organizations, policy makers and even parents. Campaigns promoting early childhood education, reading to children from birth and promoting literacy environments have sprout all over the country creating what Whitehurst and Lonigan call the emergent literacy movement that advocates for “practices that increase social interactions in a literate environment for prereaders” (849). The results of the works by Clay, Teale and Sulzby and many others that followed have sponsor change in education and in society, making people more aware of the importance of emergent literacy in the success of children as future writers and readers of conventional print.

Works Cited

Ferreiro, Emilia, ed. "The Interplay between Information and Assimilation in Beginning Literacy."                  Teale,William H. and Elizabeth Sulzby. Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1986. Print.

Purcell-Gates, Victoria. Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Print.

Teale, William H. and Elizabeth Sulzby. . Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1986. Print.

Whitehurst, Grover J. and Lonigan, Christopher J. “Child Development and Emergent Literacy.” Child Development. 69.3 (1998): 848-872. JSTOR. Web. 15 December 2011.

Valencia, Sheila W. and Elizabeth Sulzby. “Assessment: Assessment of Emergent Literacy: Storybook Reading.” The Reading Teacher. 44.7 (1991): 498-500. JSTOR. Web. 15 December 2011.