While there have been reviews over the past decade of studies examining second-language (L2) acquisition and also emergent literacy development, these related bodies of knowledge have not generally been considered together in relation to the education of very young English-language learners. This paper attempts to do so in a selective manner by…

What do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school? This article reexamines traditional notions of literacy by documenting a second grade child's literacy practices in school and out-of-school contexts. Data collected included field notes, interviews, observations of school and out-of-school literacy practices, and…

Maternal emergent literacy practices during shared-reading interactions with 18-36-month-old toddlers were examined. The investigation of emergent literacy behaviours of both mothers and toddlers investigated included the examination of phonological awareness and written language awareness. Participants included 15 mother-toddler dyads from middle…

Children who start school with strong language skills initiate a trajectory of academic success, while children with weaker skills are likely to struggle. Research has demonstrated that media and parent-child interactions, both characteristics of the home literacy environment, influence children's language skills. Using a national sample of…

Bookreading has proven to be beneficial for children's language and literacy development (e.g. Bus, Van Ijzendoorn and Pellegrini, 1995; Fletcher and Reese, 2005; Mol and Bus, 2011a). Families in Western countries are often advised to read to their young children, and many parents appear to be aware of the positive effects of bookreading.…

This article reports on an ethnographic study involving the literacy practices of two multilingual Chinese children from two similar yet different cultural and linguistic contexts: Montreal and Singapore. Using syncretism as a theoretical tool, this inquiry examines how family environment and support facilitate children's process of becoming…

Social capital--the social relations between people--is an important component of the family environment and is crucial for the creation of human capital for the next generation. Drawing on James S. Coleman's theory of family capital, this study focuses on parents' utilization of social capital to support children's literacy acquisition in four…

The combined impact of social class, cultural background and experience upon early literacy achievement in the first year of schooling is among the most durable questions in educational research. Links have been established between social class and achievement but literacy involves complex social and cognitive practices that are not necessarily…

Research indicates that mothers scaffold the literacy skills of their children when jointly engaged in literacy-related activities in monolingual families (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001). Yet little is known about the linguistic environment of English language learners in the USA, a group at high risk for reading difficulties if they are only taught…

Conceptualizations of the home have changed, particularly in respect to children's rearing and development. An increased awareness of early intervention in meeting a child's learning needs has filtered down into the organization of space in homes. Maximizing learning opportunities by creating "literacy nooks", which involves carving out…

This article describes a collaborative teacher-researcher project exploring how 4-8-year-old children understood and worked with new forms of literacy at home and at school. Twenty-five teacher-researchers investigated young children's home based multimodal funds of knowledge and then planned school or preschool curriculum based on these findings.…

The purpose of this article is to examine developments in the area of family literacy over the last decade. Acknowledging the bifurcation that has occurred in the field of family literacy, as well as changing conceptions of literacy and of families, we review naturalistic studies of literacy embedded and enacted in communities and families across…

Based on Moje et al.'s (2004) conceptions of "third space theory", this article describes how five nursery-aged children created a "third space" between home and school, in order to find continuity between home and school constructions of reading. This article describes how the children used various aspects of their home experiences, such as…

This study examined mothers beliefs about literacy development, the association of those beliefs with other aspects of the home literacy environment, and connections between parental literacy beliefs and pre-school aged children's literacy development. Data were collected from 79 mothers and their children over one year, and two profiles of…

Although Chinese has become the third largest mother tongue in both Canada and the USA, Chinese/English biliteracy development has received little attention in educational research. This article explores three Chinese-Canadian first and second graders' biliteracy (Chinese/English reading and writing) and trilingual (Mandarin, Cantonese, and…