Learning to Read by Reading: Learning How to Extend the Functional Potential of Language

This article argues that an essential factor in becoming literate is young children's developing an understanding of the registers of the written language. In order to explore what might be involved in this process, the reading-like behavior of a young prereading kindergartener is examined. Three pretend readings of a picture storybook previously read to the child are analyzed in terms of approximate, ambiguous, and extrapolated tokens, text indices distinguished by the text-linguistic scheme employed in the study. The patterns of these tokens across the three readings reflect the ways the child attempted to resolve her misunderstanding of the social conflict, plans, and actions of the characters of the story and document the kinds of strategies the child used to acquire a familiarity with the conventional registers of typical written story language.