Taking into consideration that even illiterate individuals make social uses of reading and writing, and that school has an important role in such uses, this study investigated the contribution that pre-school education has to literacy in terms of social practice for illiterate children. In a psychological perspective, literacy was examined based on the knowledge of texts and their media. Children aged 7 and 8 with different levels of schooling (three years, two years, one year, and no pre-school education) were asked to identify different text media (Task 1) and to discriminate texts of different genres (Task 2). We observed that children had limited knowledge of texts and their media, and that the years of pre-school education did not promote the development of such knowledge.
Literacy; Pre-School Education; Textual Knowledge
