Unlocking the Door: Is Parents' Reading to Children the Key to Early Literacy Development?

Reading to children can have a positive and lasting impact on emergent literacy development. The specific nature of that impact and the conditions required for its occurrence are, however, less well known. In this article, we will review some key studies showing that children do not learn print concepts simply by having a parent or other adult read to them (a commonly promoted version of family literacy called "shared reading"), but that there are shared-reading practises that can enhance children's emergent literacy development. We shall focus specifically on parent-child shared reading in this article and address three questions: (a) What happens during parent-child shared reading? (b) What are the reading skill outcomes of parent-child shared reading? and (c) How can parent-child shared reading be enriched? We close with some remarks on children's emergent literacy development. What Happens During Parent-Child Shared Reading?

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