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This study primarily aims to evaluate preschool teachers' early literacy proficiency and in-class literacy practices based on child outputs. The study comprises 29 preschool teachers working in Gaziantep and 235 students continuing their education in these teachers' classes. The 'Teacher Interview Form' was used in the study to collect information regarding teachers' early literacy proficiency and in-class literacy practices, while the 'Early Literacy Test (EROT)' was used to assess children's early literacy skills. All of the teacher interviews and EROT applications were conducted individually in a designated room or classroom at their own school. The data obtained from the study were calculated and analyzed by the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis H test. The findings revealed that there was no significant difference between the teacher's early literacy proficiency and the children's early literacy subtest scores, that there was a significant difference between the in-class literacy practices and children's receptive and expressive language vocabulary subtest scores, and there was no significant difference between the children's phonological awareness subtest scores and listening comprehension skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's most recent primary English language curriculum, which highlights oral skills, mandates communicative English language teaching to young English language learners. Recent primary English curriculum comprises two hours per week of Englishas-a-foreign language (EFL) instruction to include listening and speaking only for Grade 2 and very limited reading and writing for Grade 3 onward. While communicative skills are highly emphasized, literacy skills are kept on the back burner as reading and writing are incorporated gradually with minimal reading and writing at earlier grade levels and some literacy practices at upper grade levels. Successful emergent literacy development in English highly depends on young language learners' phonological (e.g. alliteration, rhyme), phonemic (i.e. sound manipulation), and orthographic awareness (i.e. spelling conventions) in English. The present study investigates to what extent Turkey's locally-designed primary EFL coursebooks--used in 2018-2021 academic period--cater to the early literacy needs of young learners at grades two, three, and four. The study explores early literacy content in coursebooks in a mixed-methods design: qualitatively with the descriptive content analysis and quantitatively with the frequency of early literacy constructs. The results of those analyses reveal primary English coursebooks do not promote a linguistically sound and pedagogically appropriate integration of literacy skills according to principles of second language (L2) literacy acquisition at primary levels. Turkey's misaligned early English literacy curriculum, in its current state, sends alarming messages to foreign language policymakers, material designers, and EFL educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I develop the premises for cognitive processing while learning early literacy for writing, demonstrating that the similarities between the oral production processing and that of writing do not predominate, since there are many discontinuities. To facilitate arguing, I summarize on a table the discontinuities, demonstrating many of the difficulties children face at in order to become competent writers. Thus, while the speech acquisition occurs spontaneously and compulsively, in order to learn how to produce a written text, systematic teaching by well-prepared teachers and quality teaching materials is necessary, both based on science advances that deal with verbal language. While canonical oral communication occurs face to face, in written communication there is a space--time rupture, determining an enormous cognitive cost, as the writer must have the necessary knowledge to imagine for whom he is writing, when and where he is to explain linguistically the information not at sight for the reader. The working memory limits, when we speak, impose shorter and much simpler sentences. The written text permanence ensures complex sentences, with several embedded clauses, as well as intensive use of anaphors, including lexical ones. The speech chain continuum difference from the blank spaces and the contrasts between letters, in writing is one of the greatest one between the two systems, determining one of the great difficulties for those who are beginning writing learning, also because the child 's phonological mental lexicon, often differs too much from the written words. Therefore, it is necessary to teach the consciously phoneme conversion into their respective grapheme in a given word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the third year of elementary school, after three full school years, 22% of students can read only single words in Brazil (INEP, 2016). Difficulties with reading and writing are associated with the teaching method and the absence of appropriate literacy practices. Most children that have learning difficulties can overcome it with proper instruction. The central issue discussed in this article is that for the children to learn to read, it is necessary to explicitly teach them to read. Therefore, this paper aim to (1) discuss and bring effective examples of how neuroscientific theories of reading can help us find the more effective method of literacy and teaching reading, and (2) the creation of an informative brochure for elementary school teachers, whose focus is to illustrate and make practical suggestions on scientific evidence-based literacy. Based on evidence from neuroscientific studies that underline the importance of teaching the alphabetical principle and the development of phonological awareness, we have prepared a pamphlet with practical tips and techniques for teaching reading based on the phonic method, a method that corresponds to the evidence from neuroscientific studies reviewed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the performance of 4th and 6th grade students in the Task of Spelling Words and Pseudowords (TEPP). It was analyzed validity evidence based on the relationship with criteria (correlation with age, and comparison of groups by year of schooling and gender), as well as convergent validity through correlations among TEPP with the Balanced Dictation instrument and the Child Neuropsychological Assessment Instrument NEUPSILIN-Inf. In addition, it is presented normative data for students of 4th and 6th grades of Elementary School. It included 181 students from public schools, being 55.8% girls, with aged between 9 and 12 years old. Higher scores were identified for older and more educated students; in addition higher scores were found for girls in some TEPP measures, reinforcing the criterion validity of the instrument. The TEPP instrument has been related to spelling, attention, memory, executive functions, language and arithmetic skills, showing evidence of convergent validity. The normative data of TEPP are presented, considering the two school years of the participants, contributing to the professionals who use this instrument in clinical practice and also in the educational setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of rhyme contained in children's poems as a trigger for analysis at different levels of linguistic awareness - phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, textual and pragmatic -, promoting the expansion of important notions about language for learning to read and write in the literacy process. The data were obtained through transcriptions of poetry workshops held in a first year class of Elementary School that were analyzed qualitatively. The moments of reflection on the object of the study were identified and categorized in a table. From the choice of the most frequent types of behavior, it was possible to recognize and draw up a profile of the skills that require more stimulation during the literacy period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a review of Brazilian literature from 2015 to 2020, with the following objectives: a) mapping the recent Brazilian production on acquisition of written language with a focus on cognitive sciences of reading; b) categorize production on the essential components of literacy; c) identify the main trends on the topic; and d) to point out potential areas for the development of the theme. The Periódicos CAPES and SciELO databases were searched for studies related to the six essential components of literacy: phonemic awareness; systematic phonic instruction; fluency in oral reading; vocabulary development; understanding of texts; and written production. After applying the exclusion criteria, 18 references were found, summarized and analyzed by the authors. The results indicate that, among the articles located in the cognitive sciences of reading perspective, works on phonemic or phonological awareness are predominant (13 of the 18 studies reviewed), and this component appears related to other skills for language acquisition. It was also found that most studies (15 out of 18 studies) proved strong or decisive relationships between the development of essential components and the acquisition of written language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, research in this field has addressed different early literacy skills and studied the pedagogical practices that promote the initial learning of reading and writing skills. This study develops a programme that promotes early literacy skills, called Ouvir as Letras (Listen to the Letters). The efficacy of the programme was evaluated in comparison with two implementations of the Portuguese preschool education curriculum: one structured and the other semi-structured, in a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up. The study was carried out with the participation of 124 five- and six-year-old children who attended preschool in four schools in the north of Portugal. The results suggest that the Ouvir as Letras programme was more effective in facilitating the acquisition of basic skills to initiate children in the learning of written language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]