Anastasiow 1971

Anastasiow, Nicholas. 1971. "Oral language and learning to read." In Braun 1971. Interest level: lay specialist.

States two crucial factors in learning how to read are children's abilities to comprehend language, and their experiential background. Sees children's oral productions as a product of these two factors. The teacher's ability to diagnose children's levels of cognitive and perceptual development is more critical in planning instruction than is a measure of their oral productions.

Discusses categorization and pattern seeking, and children's curiosity and need to grow as motivation. Children's perceptual abilities to detect regularities in order and structure with the environment are basic for cognitive functioning.

Teachers may better evaluate children's oral language abilities by having them draw a picture and dictate a story about it instead of giving a test. Language is initially subservient to cognition, but later facilitates thinking. Teachers should choose methodologies and strategies that help children discover regularities that lead to the structure.

Children must be able to match the regularities of print with the regularities of their stored auditory perceptions. What is stored in the brain is what children have structured, not a carbon copy of what has occurred.

• Bibliography module: Anastasiow 1971
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): A
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 28 June 1999

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