To describe the process by which young children accomplish individual emergent readings, it is necessary to move beyond holistic assessments and into micro-analysis. An extension of an existing emergent reading scale to the level of the t-unit (as applied to a transcription of a five-year-old Head Start child's dialogue with an adult) revealed: how a single emergent reading can incorporate a repertoire of dialogue and reading-like behaviors as sequentially arranged segments; how the reader developed momentum as she read; how repeated text segments were the most likely part of a text to be retrieved verbatim; and how, as readings became more narrative, the consistency within the predominant category increased. A second approach to emergent reading is to analyze the relationship between emergent readings and previous adult read-alouds. Adult read-alouds by Head Start teachers and subsequent emergent readings by Head Start children were tape recorded. Results indicated that some children incorporate into their emergent readings the content, and sometimes the form, of the teacher-child dialogue from read-alouds. Findings confirm results of earlier studies--only some children (especially those with the most extensive home literacy experience) adopt the language of read-alouds into their emergent readings. (Four figures of data are included; 16 references are attached.) (RS)