Home context and the development of pre-literacy skills in the child

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the prevailing literacy characteristics of Turkish middle and working class homes and to identify the literacy activities that contribute to the acquisition of pre-literacy skills of preschool children, growing up in these environments. It was hypothesized that (1) middle class homes provide a more literacy rich environment than working class homes, (2) children of middle class families have better performance on pre-literacy tasks than children of working class families and, (3) adult-child book reading activities contribute more to the development of children's pre-literacy skills than parental use of literacy, characteristics of physical environment and socioeconomic status. The sample consisted of 36 illiddle class and 39 working class motherchild dyads. Children were their fifth year of age. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the information on the demographic characteristics and, home literacy activities and materials. Two home literacy environment scales, Parental Use of Literacy and Adult-Child Book Reading Activity were constructed and a physical environment score was computed. Children were assessed on a variety of pre-literacy skills such as receptive vocabulary (PPVT), definition skills (vocabulary part of Wisc-R), listening comprehension, child book reading behaviors, phonemic awarene~s, letter recognition, letter naming, rhyming, and syllabic segmentation. T-tests were used to compare the two groups in terms of the home literacy environments and children's pre-literacy skills. Step wise multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to identify which of the four independent variables (Parental Use of Literacy, Adult-Child Book Reading Activity, physical environment and SES) contribute to the development of preli teracy skills of children. Findings indicated differences between~ middle and working class families in terms of their home literacy environments. Results also suggested that children of middle class families performed better in PPVT, Wisc-R, listening comprehension, child book reading behaviors, and phonemic awareness tasks than children of working class families. However, no significant differences were obtained between the performance of the two groups on letter recognition, letter naming, rhyming and syllabic segmentation tasks. It was found that word knowledge skills as measured by the PPVT, definition task and syllabic segmentation were explained only by the variables related to Parental Use of Literacy. Listening comprehension was explained by SES, while phonemic awareness and letter naming were , explained by items of Adult-Child Book Reading Activity Scale as well as Parental Use of Literacy Scale. Letter recognition was only explained by the physical environment score while rhyming was explained by items of the Adult-Child Book Reading Activity Scale. In general findings indicated that middle and working class homes are different in terms of home literacy environments as well as pre-literacy skills of children. Results also suggested that different home literacy variables contribute to the development of different kinds of pre-literacy skills.