Oral language is the foundation for literacy development.

Oral language provides children with a sense of words and sentences and builds sensitivity to the sound system so that children can acquire phonological awareness and phonics. Through their own speech, children demonstrate their understanding of the meanings of words and written materials.

Supporting evidence

• Children reared in families where parents provide rich language and literacy support do better in school than those who do not. Language-poor families are likely to use fewer different words in their everyday conversations and the language environment is more likely to be controlling and punitive.

• Exposure to less common, more sophisticated vocabulary (rare words) at home relates directly to children's vocabulary acquisition. Rare words are those that go beyond the typical 8,500 most common words in the English language.

• There is a strong relationship between vocabulary development and reading achievement. Understanding the meanings of words is critical to understanding what a child reads. Good readers combine a variety of strategies to read words. Even when children have strong familiarity with the alphabetic code, they frequently meet words for which the pronunciation is not easily predictable.

Children who acquire strong vocabularies increase their ability to make sense of what a word might be while using what they know about phonics.

Children's experiences with the world greatly influence their ability to comprehend what they read.

Reading involves comprehending written texts. What children bring to a text influences the understandings they take away and the use they make of what is read.

Supporting evidence

• Background knowledge about the world is built from a child's experiences.

• The more limited a child's experiences the more likely he or she will have difficulty comprehending what is read.

Learning to read and write starts long before 6 years and has long-lasting effects.

Learning to read and write is an ongoing process from infancy. Contrary to popular belief, it does not suddenly begin at 5 or 6 years. From the earliest years, everything that adults do to support children's language and literacy is critical.

Supporting evidence

• Language and literacy develop concurrently and influence one another. What children learn from listening and talking contributes to their ability to read and write and vice versa. For example, young children's phonological awareness (ability to identify and make oral rhymes, identify and work with syllables in spoken words, and the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds— phonemes—in spoken words) is an important indicator of their potential success in learning to decode print. Early vocabulary development is an important predictor of success in reading comprehension. Both phonological awareness and vocabulary development begin early with participation in rhyming games and chants, shared book experiences, and extended conversations with adults.6

• Children who fall behind in oral language and literacy development in the years before formal schooling are less likely to be successful beginning readers; and their achievement lag is likely to persist throughout the primary grades and beyond.7

• Responsive adults have a special role in supporting children's ongoing, self-generated learning. Instructional support that relies on the accumulation of isolated skills is not sufficient. Teaching children to apply their knowledge and skills in meaningful situations has a significantly greater effect on their ability to learn to read.8

Children's experiences with books and print greatly influence their ability to comprehend what they read.

Reading with adults, looking at books independently, and sharing reading experiences with peers are some of the ways that children experience books.

Supporting evidence

• Knowledge about print is built from children's experiences with books and other written materials.

• Shared book reading experiences have a special role in fostering early literacy development by building background knowledge about the world and concepts about books and print.10

Source: Reading Rockets

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/early-literacy-policy-and-practice-preschool-years