Current research shows that the skills of listening, talking, reading, and writing are learned simultaneously. Children acquire these skills from their experiences of copying adults and interacting with other children. The term "emergent literacy" refers to the combination of the four skills in literacy learning. The whole language approach supports emergent literacy by incorporating the skills into children's learning experiences. This approach can be used by teachers and by parents at home. Parents can foster children's literacy by providing them with a rich print and verbal environment at home. This may involve conversing with their children, keeping examples of writing around the home, using wordless books for storytelling, and giving children access to printed materials. The success of a school literacy program often depends on children's literacy learning at home. As a result of recent research which supports natural, rather than formal, language learning, teachers have begun to examine schools' reading readiness programs. Many traditional reading readiness tests measure skills such as auditory memory and letter recognition, which are abstracted from the reading process. Emergent literacy tests would measure such qualities as children's prior knowledge and ability to associate meaning with print. A nine-item bibliography is provided. (BC)