Written Language & Literacy 13:1 (2010), 24–60. doi 10.1075/wll.13.1.02sha issn 1387–6732 / e-issn 1570–6001 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Emergent literacy in children of immigrants coming from a primarily oral literacy culture* Michal Shany a , Esther Geva b and Liat Melech-Feder a a University of Haifa, Israel / b University of Toronto, Canada Tis study examined emergent literacy skills of 61 kindergarten children whose families had immigrated to Israel from a primarily oral society (Ethiopia). Tree complementary perspectives were examined: developmental patterns, individual diferences, and the contribution of parent literacy. Te emergent literacy skills of children whose families were from Ethiopia were compared to those of 52 children coming from a primarily literate culture. Te groups had acquired less complex Hebrew literacy skills in the same order, including phonological awareness, letter naming and consonant writing. However, the Ethiopian Israeli children were less profcient on various aspects of Hebrew language profciency, and less familiar with aspects of cultural and environmental literacy. Most were also unable to speak or comprehend Amharic. In both groups, phonological awareness explained individual diferences in letter naming, but vocabulary and syntactic knowledge added to the explained variance only in the Ethiopian Israe- li group. Letter naming was associated with consonant writing in both groups. Hebrew oral and written language profciency of Ethiopian Israeli mothers was positively correlated with literacy skills in their children. Te results underscore the importance of distinguishing between less complex, modularized, aspects of emergent literacy and more complex literacy skills. Here the cumulative efects of poverty, oral home culture, parental inability to mediate language and literacy, and non-optimal conditions for becoming bilingual place young immigrant children at risk for academic failure early on. Keywords: emergent literacy, oral culture, Ethiopian Israeli children immigrants