Why reading and
writing together? Natural literacy
development is dependent on the experiences the child has through reading and
writing activities. Reading-writing
activities are essential to the child's learning to read and write.
Reading and writing should occur naturally to construct meaning
in everyday situations. (Miller, 1982; Wilson, 1981).
Reading and writing are interdependent processes that are essential to
each other and mutually beneficial (Holt & Vacca, 1984).
As writing improves through daily communicative use, reading is enhanced
(Goodman & Goodman, 1983). The
relationship between reading and writing is based on communication.
Both processes should develop as a natural extension of the child's
need to communicate (Wilson, 1981). In
other words, if reading and writing are to be communicative then the reader
needs to read with the sense of the writer and the writer needs to write with
the sense of the reader. A reader
need to make sense of what the writer is communicating through the text and the
writer need to make sure that his/her message is clear and understood by the
reader. Children should make the
connection that other children will be reading their writing, so that children
will need to have a better sense of the writer and write better with the sense
of the reader. Children need to
develop their communicative skills by having the opportunities to read and write
(Aulls, 1985; Holt & Vacca, 1984; Smith, 1983).
Literacy instruction needs to explicitly
present the relationship between reading and writing (Goodman & Goodman,
1983; Shanahan, 1988). Children
need to view themselves as readers and writers to build knowledge about the
forms and functions of the language (Goodman & Goodman, 1983; Mayo, 2000;
Miller, 1982). In other words,
children need to know the function of reading and writing.
Since the skills
underlying reading and writing knowledge and processes are similar, then the
combination of reading and writing instruction is essential in literacy
development. Even though reading
and writing involve similar cognitive processes, it has different learning
experiences during reading and composing (Brooks, 1988; Heller, 1991; Shanahan,
1988; Tierney & Pearson, 1984; Tierney & Shanahan, 1991).
The constructive processes that develop meaning are apparent through the
reading and writing connection. “In
reading, meaning is build from texts and in composing, meaning is built for
text” (Nelson, 1998, p. 279). Therefore,
reading is the construction of meaning through relationships of parts from the
text and prior knowledge, while writing is relating our prior knowledge and
experiences to the text by putting meaning on the page (Wittrock, 1984).
When a child reads, he/she makes predictions about the text, he/she is
not simply reading for meaning but is focused on the events based his/her
interpretation. In
other words, the reader makes predictions, constructs meaning, and struggles to
understand the text. When a child
writes, he/she develops a new text using prior knowledge, imagination and other
resources (Brooks, 1988). Thus, all
literate persons are readers and writers, constructing meaning from the text in
which they read and meaning from the text in which they write (Nelson, 1998).