Two key concepts in the Vygotskian perspective, social interaction and scaffolding, have implications for emergent literacy. Children develop literacy as a result of trying to communicate with others in the environment. Vygotsky focused on literacy as purely social, influenced by a community of learners, including children, peers, and adults. Children increasingly understand the purposes of oral and written language as they observe how adults use literacy to construct and communicate meaning, and as they engage in literacy activities themselves. Children's creations of micro-communities, or literacy partnerships, during unstructured play and shared literacy activities, such as reading together, provide opportunities to rehearse the construction and communication of meaning and to engage in representational competence. As children come to understand the communicative nature of literacy, they form a link between their inner experience and the outer world. Vygotsky places greater emphasis on interaction among children and adults than on the transfer of knowledge from adult to child prevalent in current applications of the scaffolding perspective. As it is currently used, scaffolding suggests that adults provide the framework for literacy; whereas, Vygotsky suggested that children construct their own literacy framework. The scope and sequence of the scaffold is continually redesigned by the learner and facilitated by the literacy partner. Further research is needed on literacy partnerships to determine if they facilitate understanding of language and understanding of who constructs the scaffold. (Contains 25 references.) (KDFB)