We know that being a parent brings countless challenges, worries, doubts, and fears. But alongside everything we will have to accept as beyond our control—or beyond our full understanding—we must also recognize the importance of responsibility, duty, and commitment to the children we bring into the world. One of the most beautiful commitments is that of learning. Learning based on care, love, and play. And it is here that I want to focus on the importance of emergent literacy—as part of this parental commitment and as a guide on the learning journey toward reading and writing, which we all hope will be successful for our children.

Why does reading begin long before knowing how to read?

Emergent literacy is the name given to the set of skills that develop before a child formally learns to read and write—so, before entering the first year of primary school. It is during this stage, in early childhood, and even before birth, that parents become the first influencers of these skills, and the home environment becomes the main setting for this “learning-before-learning.”

Before learning to read, a child must understand different concepts, know words, comprehend and use various types of sentences, and grasp that words are made up of syllables and that syllables are made up of smaller units—sounds.
Parents should therefore focus on stimulating oral language, playing with word sounds, explaining the meaning of new words, and modeling different sentence structures—instead of focusing solely on making children memorize the alphabet.

Other aspects of emergent literacy relate to a child’s motivation to handle and flip through a book, listen to stories, ask questions about what is written on street signs, cereal boxes, or so many other things that involve contact with written language. This curiosity can—and should—be nurtured by parents from an early age.

Concrete suggestions? Let’s explore them in the next post.

Ana Isabel Graça
Speech and Language Therapist (Ministry of Education, Portugal) · Professor · Researcher
Sign Language Interpreter