Mary-grace Kasungo Musonda

Literacy Behaviours Preschoolers Exhibit and Bring Along to School: Emergent Literacy Children Bring Along to School but Sometimes Ignored by Teachers Mary-grace Kasungo Musonda

This study has mapped the literacy behaviours which pre-schoolers exhibit in selected households of Lusaka. It tried to answer the question of what role parents played in facilitating their children?s literacy development from emergent to conventional readers and writers and what print exist in these pre-schoolers homes and surrounding environments. The study brought out literacy behaviours in the following categories: arithmetic was mostly practiced; television and radio were seen to have an influence on the pre-schoolers? acquisition of oral language and emergent literacy through songs and advertisements; singing, which is imbedded with a lot of emergent literacy, was enjoyed by most of the children; singing the English alphabet song was prominent. The study also found out that children involved themselves in a lot of literacy related games such as Ciyato and draft.