At the youngest ages, two through seven, long before children can read as well as they can listen, progress in language occurs chiefly through listening and talking, not through reading and writing. But because we have thought of reading and writing as separate from listening and talking, we have tended to spend large amounts of time—too much time—on the simple cat-in-the-hat kinds of written material that young children are able to read and understand for themselves. We have failed to focus effectively on the knowledge of both language and the world that children can gain in those years only
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