H-818 Reading Development and Instruction

Language and Literacy program
Instructor: Pamela A. Mason, Ed. D.
Harvard graduate School of Education
Fall 2009

ANALYTIC PAPER # 2

Paula CruzatThere are three social contexts where literacy is a component that affect child development, and in turn influence emergent literacy: home, community and the school. In each of these contextsexist a relationship between communication skills (reading, writing, oral language and listening), and each context influences what happens with regard to the others (Morrow, Gambrell &Pressley.2007).

The development of emergent literacy can show differences in different populations of children, based on characteristics such as: country of origin, mother tongue, socioeconomic status(SES), degree of access and exposure to formal schooling, etc. In Chile, the big difference between populations is noted by socioeconomic status and this is the main factor that influences the success inthe development of emergent literacy. Therefore, some chilenian students (high SES) are motivated in the emergent literacy process and others (low SES) are neither motivated nor stimulated.According to Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998), in United States SES correlates .68 with academic achievement. In Chile, the situation can be considered in the same way: 55% of low and medium- low SES 4th gradersare not reading well and only 10% of high SES 4th graders evidence the same problem (see Appendix # 1). Low SES children are in a social context that does not stimulate emergent literacy(phonological awareness, letter knowledge, language, conceptual knowledge, etc.) and the cognitive process is not developed in the best way. The consequences for this population of children who have disadvantagedearly educational experiences are that they are not able to utilize new educational experiences efficiently (Stanovich, 1986).

Since we know that the context is important in emergent…