The remainder of this entry will sketch some thoughts that may come to impact how we approach the encoding, decoding and understanding of literate language. Across this prolonged developmental period, learners become increasingly more adepts and fluid in navigating and representing ideas in literate language. At this stage, a learner is apt to be better equipped to explore complex ideas on the page than verbally, particularly if the learner has a strong corpus of academic language. By 15 to 17 years of age, print (finally) overtakes oral language. It is only at 13 years of age that your skilled readers are as competent in oral language as they are in literacy. In the coming years, the child’s oral language will continue to be stronger than what he/she can express on the written page. This rich oral language provides ample stimulus for learners to begin exploring known (oral) words in print. By age 6, a child will know thousands of words in oral language, but only know a few - if any - when read (Chall, 1996). In this case, the code is the interface between language and literacy, and this code requires that learners develop additional skills in order to coordinate and manipulate language-in-print.įrom an early age, a child is learning language, but this child will only slowly develop an awareness of print.

phonological, lexical, morphological, grammatical, textual and pragmatic skills - then the learning of “the code” serves to facilitate the transference of the learner’s speech into print, which itself can serve as a platform upon which further literate language can be built. If one is developing the components of language - e.g.

The accompanying schematic addresses this rough relationship between language and literacy.

Types of encoding in communication