ORAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY LEARNING IN CONTEXT - THE ROLE OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

The effects of friend/nonfriend groupings on early literacy were exami ned. Literacy was defined in terms of children's use of literate langu age and traditional school-based literacy. We predicted that friend, c ompared to nonfriend, conditions elicit more conflicts/resolutions, em otional terms, and literate language; that the friendship condition is particularly supportive for girls' exhibition of literate language an d emotion terms; and that literate language predicts school-based lite racy. Same gender dyads of kindergarten friends and nonfriends were ob served in experimental literacy events and measures of oral language a nd reading and writing were collected. Results generally supported the predictions. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of clos e relationships and emotion for early literacy development.