243Available in www.scielo.br/paideia

firstly, what aspects of language benefit from shared reading and, secondly, what specific forms of shared reading produce these benefits. Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998, see also Cabell, Justice, Konold, & McGinty, 2011) offered a typology of the skills related to what they call ‘emergent literacy’, which consists of the set of skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for reading and writing. The skills related to emergent literacy were divided into two types by the authors: ‘inside-out ’ skills- knowledge of graphemes, phonological awareness (e.g., recognizing rhymes), and syntactic awareness (e.g., recognizing grammatical errors),- and ‘outside-in ’ skills- semantic and conceptual knowledge (e.g., vocabulary, general knowledge), comprehension of narratives, knowledge of the conventions of the printed word Various studies directed toward classroom practice rely on the assumption of the positive effects of shared reading (reading aloud by an adult to one or more children) for the development of language skills (e.g., Flynn, 2011; Morrow, 2009). However, systematic studies are needed to verify, 1 Acknowledgment: The authors thank Dapheny Day Leandro Feitosa and Raquel Coelho for support during data collection and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights