Patterned and predictable materials in a beginning reading program

Language is the means by which children come to understand the sense that others have made of the world as they seek to make sense of it themselves. Children need to interact with others through language in order to survive and to be fully functional in society. This involvement in the functions of language accounts for the natural acquisition of oral language. Young children are not sent to language school to be taught the rules of oral language, but rather, they interact freely with parents, siblings, and others. Through this interaction, young children begin to learn to use language for appropriate purposes and to decipher the rules of the system. These early attempts at language learning are successful because the family gives much encouragement to young children in their first utterances (Goodman, 1977)