The article analyses themes that háve been brought into approaches to the development of language literacy by the popularity of Vygotsky's ideas of a teaching praxis focused on harmonising teaching with the development of the individual and on developing pupils' learning potential. The mediating role of the teacher is emphasised in line with the definition of learning in the zone of proximal development, which has become a frequent frameworkforthe formulation of learning conceptions. So too is the need to diagnose the individual learning potential of pupils and on this basis to make learning interventions to facilitate teaching that goes beyond the current capacities of the child. Also highlighted are pupils' metacognitive abilities, which they first acquire in joint activity and gradually learn to use to monitor and sort out their mental proc-esses engaged in understanding written speech and reading. The text throws more light on these trends with reference to rep-resentative educational conceptions and models that apply Vysogtsky's theories to different areas of language literacy in the form of specific teaching techniques.