1 Between the lines: exploring the auditory bridge to literacy

Not long ago, in conversation with a student whose essays I had taken great pleasure in reading, I commented that she had a feel for language and wondered where it might have come from. Her answer was as unexpected as it was unsurprising: “I love reading. I love books – the feel of them, the smell of them”. She went on to talk about her vivid memories of being read to as a child. This intuitive link made between a feel for language and a love of reading warranted, I felt, an exploration of dimensions of the experience of learning to read that might suggest alternative starting points for thinking about literacy development. It is generally acknowledged that children who are read to are more likely to succeed at school than those who are not. Such children are seen to have an educational advantage because being read to increases their reading practice and practice leads to reading fluency (Nathan and Stanovich, 1991). However, someone who reads a great deal and reads fluently may not necessarily have a love of reading, which suggests something of greater substance than cognitive skill; it implies emotional attachment, perhaps even a therapeutic element. A feel for language similarly expresses an affective connection to the written word. A love of reading and a feel for language appear to be both sides of the same coin. Yet Gundlach suggests that childre