Young children's written language development and oral and written language awareness

Abstract

The purposes of this study were (1) to describe and examine the development of young children's reading and writing behaviors and (2) to examine young children's oral and written language awareness development. This study has shown that young children ages from 3 to 5 years have several preconventional reading and writing behaviors. They cannot fully discriminate between oral and written language, so that they use mixed forms of oral and written languages. The following findings support Sulzby's (1985) claim that literacy develops only in a certain sociocultural context: (1) the contents of the message being delivered influence the use of oral and written language and (2) the age factor is significant for the level of reading and writing development and the degree of decontextuali‐zation. On the other hand, young children experience more difficulty in using written language in the task situation of constructing messages for themselves in block building than in the task situation of delivering messages fro...