The most important aspect of emergent literacy is print motivation, which refers to a young child's knowledge that a "print world" exists and that it can be fun and interesting to engage with. Children who find books to be fun and applicable to their own lives gain print motivation. Reading to children at an early age can help them to be motivated to investigate books and language.
Vocabulary learning is another important aspect of emergent literacy. In order for children to build up to a level of literacy, they must first be able to orally name and categorize the world. Children with a strong oral vocabulary are more likely to have stronger literacy skills than children who enter the school system with a small vocabulary.
Print awareness refers to a child's ability to understand how to use a book as well as how to differentiate text from pictures and to understand how to follow text along a page. Related to this skill is letter knowledge, which means that a child can differentiate between different letters and even identify them. Print awareness begins with a child understanding how to hold a book and turn the pages and can extend to a child trying to make out the individual letters in each word.
Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and differentiate between the different sounds in words. Though this skill is largely oral, a child's ability to differentiate between parts of words can help them to later understand how to sound out words and make connections between letter combinations and sounds.