Young children's conceptual factors of reading

The purpose of this study was to examine young children's understanding of the reading process. The subjects were 60 children whose ages ranged from three to five. The students were administered an open-ended interview to obtain their conceptions of reading. Using content analysis, their responses were categorized and frequency distributions were tallied. Since there was an unequal number of responses for each category, percentages for each category were computed using the total number of responses rather than the number of respondents. The results indicated that young children's immediate experiences had an impact on their conceptions of reading. Most of the young children's reading experiences consisted of reading pictures and listening to stories. Since most young children are not able to read, others read for them. The reading areas are also part of the child's experiences. Most of their reading experiences are in school, home and community.