Emergent comprehension: Understanding comprehension development among young literacy learners

Abstract

This article hones what is meant by ‘emergent comprehension’. The authors define emergent comprehension as the period when young children, prior to conventional reading, engage in meaningful experiences that stimulate the development and use of meaning-making strategies with potential to affect later reading comprehension. The construct ‘emergent comprehension’ reflects the theoretical line the authors drew from meaning making, viewed primarily via theories of child development, to reading comprehension as conceived by the RAND model, a commonly accepted conception of comprehension. A vignette from a three year longitudinal study of very young children’s literacy learning, illustrates the authors’ conceptions. The vignette, one of more than 100 collected in the first year of the study, is interpreted via the three dimensions of the RAND model as well as relevant research and theories from the child development literature. This new model contributes to a life-long theory of reading development (Alexander, 2006) as well as theories of emergent literacy (Clay, 1966).