Effects of Home Literacy, Parents' Beliefs, and Children's Task-Focused Behavior on Emergent Literacy and Word Reading Skills.

Stephenson, K. A., Parrila, R. K., and Georgiou, G. K.(2008). Effects of home literacy, parents' beliefs, and children's task-focused behavior on emergent literacy and word reading skills. Scientific Studies of Reading, 12(1), 24-50.

Correlational Study

Given that few studies examine the efficacy of home literacy experiences such as storybook reading or parent attitude toward their children's reading ability, the authors decided to investigate these factors in order to shed some light on home experiences that may or may not have an effect on emergent literacy skills.  

Purpose of study: examine effects of home literacy including shared book reading, teaching activities, and number of books; children's on-task behavior, and parents' beliefs about reading ability.

Past studies indicate that storybook exposure is likely related to language, emergent literacy and later reading achievement. It may be associated, for instance, with better vocabulary and listening comprehension skills, but not phonological sensitivity, letter-name knowledge, or letter-sound knowledge. Neither has it been associated with better reading skills in Gr. 1 and 3. Informal teaching activities were, however, significantly associated with better written language skills and knowledge of letter names and sounds, but not phonological sensitivity. Those children who could recognize letters and read word before kindergarten were better readers in grade one than those who only were read books in the home (Kirby and Hogan, 2007).

Methods

61 children (Canadian) 9 teachers, random selection. Whether child attended preschool (50% did) did not correlate with any dependent measures. 53 students final sample number due to attrition or grade retention.

Children tested at beginning of K for letter name knowledge, and phonological sensitivity (CTOPP blending words task). Children's parents responded to a questionnaire on literacy environment and parent beliefs/expectations. End of K, children tested for elision task, letter sound knowledge, word ID, PPVT-III and Raven's Matrices, also rated for task focus in classroom (max score=25). Delayed posttesting given in April/May of gr. 1 for Word ID and Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, and Rashotte, 1999).

Home literacy assessed with 6 Likert-scale questions

How often cild taught to identify letters?

How often child taught letter sounds?

How often child taught to read words between ages of 2-4?

How often child is read to in the home?

How many children's books in the home?

How many books in the home?

Attitude questions:

How well do you believe your child reads?

Your child finds reading very easy . . . very hard

To do well in reading, you child has to try . . . not at all hard . . . very hard

How well do you think our child will do in rading later on in school?

How well do yo believe your child does at school?

Your child finds school very easy . . . very hard

To do well in school your child has to try  . . not at all hard . . . very hard

How well do you tink your child will do at school in the future?

Teacher questionnaire rating on-task focus

Does student find something else to do instead of focusing on task in hand?

Does student actively attempt to solve difficult situations and tasks?

Does student give up easily?

Does student demonstrate initiative and persistence in activities and tasks?

If activity is not going well, does student lose focus?

Results:

In Kindergarten, word ID standard scores were average. Gr 1 standard showed well developed word ID skills, however, he measurement instrument was not standardized. Elision and blending were combined to make a new variable - phonological sensitivity. Letter name and sound were combined to letter knowledge variable. (both sets highly correlated). Grade 1 reading and TOWRE were combined to make a single variable, also.

Although environmental factors and on-task behavior correlated with dependent measures, neither predicted variance when emergent literacy skills were controlled. Parent reports of children being taught letter names and sounds correlated with all the dependent variables. Parent reports of children being taught letter names and sounds did not predict phonological sensitivity. Direct teaching did not predict word reading. Parent beliefs about children's reading and task-focused behaviors were highly correlated with reading measures. Analyses indicate that parent teaching in the home before kindergarten is a factor for the development of phonological sensitivity, letter knowledge and word reading. Story reading frequency and number of books did not show effects. Results were consistent with Senechal and LeFevre's findings (2002). Something that needs further examination is whether direct teaching activities take place outside of shared book reading or during other activities such as writing. Parents more likely to coach letter knowledge and word identification during kindergarten and first gr rather than during preschool years.  Children's task focused behavior predicted variance in letter knowledge and word reading in K when nonverbal IQ and vocabulary knowledge were controlled. Parents beliefs about children's current reading ability predicted variance in phonological sensitivity and word ID in K when nonv IQ and vocabulary were controlled.

Is Reading Important in Reading Readiness Programs? A Randomized Field Trial with Teachers as Program Implementers

Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L.S., Thompson, A., al Otaiba, S., Yen, L., Yang, N.J., Braun, M., and O'Connor, R. (2001). Is reading important in reading readiness programs? A randomized field trial with teachers as program implementers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 251-267.

Purpose of study: to examine the effectiveness of PA training with and without beginning decoding instructions.

33 teachers, 404 children, 2 treatment groups and one control. G1= PA training, G2= PA + beginning decoding (20 wks) Pre and posttest data collected.

Many researchers in training studies taught PA in isolation rather than with decoding instruction (phoneme-grapheme relationships) holding the perspective that PA is a prerequisite skill for reading conducted prior to rather than with formal reading instruction, however, there are many studies supporting concurrent instruction.

Research questions for this study: Does phonological awareness training differentially affect student performance on phonological tasks? Does beginning decoding instruction and practice influence student performance on letter sounds, reading, and spelling measures?

Treatments: Ladders to Literacy workbook with 15 select activities to stimulate syllable and word awareness, rhyming, first sound isolation, onset-rime blending, and sound segmenting. PALS Activities: Peer Assisted Learning Strategies are scripted coaching that children provide each other. The two strategies were "What sound?" and  "What Word?"

Link to a video of what these look like in practice:  http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/pals/teachmat/ReadingVideos.html

Results:

At the end of kindergarten, both treated groups performed comparably on posttreatment phonological awareness tasks which was a combined score for segmentation and blending tasks, and both outperformed controls.

On alphabetic reading and decoding tasks, Ladders + PALS students did better than other two groups with effect sizes ranging from .08-1.42 when compared to the control group and .02-1.96 when compared with the Ladders only group.  Ladders and control student performance were about the same for alphabetic tasks.  Effects were consistent in both Title I and non-Title I schools. The conclusion of the researchers: kindergarten children can be taught phonological awareness and decoding skills; practice with both simultaneously strengthens beginning reading reading more than PA training alone. Results provide some weak evidence for a bidirectional phonological awareness-early reading relationship.

In the follow-up (5 months post instruction) when all groups were in their second month of first grade (October), there was no statistically significant difference between the two treatment groups and the control group on alphabetic measures, however, the treatment groups continued to have statistically significant scores compared to the control group on phonological awareness tasks.

Of note: Not all Ladders and Ladders +PALS students had positive outcome with the treatments. Nonresponders were not all categorized as children with disabilities. Among the nine with disabilities in the L + P group, there was growth on Word identification and word attack of as much as 16 points, but 5 of the 9 made no gains, indicating that this instructional program accommodates some students but not all.

Teaching Phoneme Awareness to Pre-literate Children with Speech Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Hesketh, A., Dima, E., and Nelson, V. (2007). Teaching phoneme awareness to pre-literate children with speech disorder: a randomized controlled trial.  International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 42(3), 251-271.

 

Role of phonological awareness in speech change is not understood.  Speech and language therapy often necessitate tasks that require an awareness of phonemes. Preschool children, largely preliterate, often have little PA and are therefore, are unable to segment or manipulate phonemes.

This study investigates the possibility of teaching PA skills to preliterate children with speech disorder.  Forty-two children (randomized controlled design) with speech disorders ages 4-4.5 years were placed in a PA or a language stimulation intervention.  Assessments measured alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation, word segmentation and phoneme addition or deletion (pre and posttests).

Results: more children improved in the PA group than the language stimulation group on three of four measures. On the two most advanced tasks, segmentation and manipulation, only a few children showed improvement. Phoneme isolation was significant for a majority of the children in the phonological awareness group.

Conclusions: Phoneme isolation is the most easily learned skill and appears relevant to speech and language therapy. Phoneme addition and deletion  and word segmentation were attainable only by a few older and more cognitively developed children. Isolation of initial consonants can be triggered at 4-4.5 years though meaningful activities, but phoneme manipulation tasks were beyond the cognitive ability of most pre-literate children.

As a group, children with speech disorders perform worse than their peers on PA tasks. Uncertainty remains re: its role in speech therapy and also its relationship to lexical phonological representations. Wood and Terrell (1998) found evidence for developing PA in preliterate children without intervention. 25% of participants (ages 3yr 10m - 4yr 11 m) could perform complex PA tasks including deletion. Hulme (2005) found that children (mean age 4 y 11 m) could segment initial and final phonemes from syllables despite no knowledge of letter-sound correspondence, but the ability was more noted in older children,; however, some typically developing children demonstrate PA before the age of 5 without literacy experiences.

Warrick et al, (1993) found that some children with speech and language disorders could develop PA before the age of 5. Laing and Espeland (2005) found evidence that instruction improved initial phoneme matching among 4 yr olds and Gillon (2005) provided instruction for children with speech disorders aged 3-5, noting improvement in phoneme matching beyond the level of typically developing peers in a control group. Treated children could not segment; however, they did well with phoneme isolation of the first sound in words.

Program: children in both groups had 20 min x 30 sessions, 2-3 times weekly with a researcher, resulting in approximately 10 weeks of intervention, carried out at home or school per parent choice. Children in the PA group began with syllable and rhyme awareness (clapping, blending, segmenting, completing, judging, matching) moving on to PA (consonants and picture links, initial sounds, final sounds, vowel sounds with picture links, identifying initial and final clusters).  The language stimulation program focused on listening comprehension, print awareness, expressing feelings, developing vocabulary and concept knowledge like days of week, seasons, transportation, etc.

Significance of outcomes based on comparing pre and posttests for improvement in alliteration awareness, isolation of phoneme, and segmentation tasks as well as improvement above chance for phoneme add/del, since participants were all at chance levels before the intervention.

Gillon (2005) found that children with speech disorders receiving intervention later developed phoneme and letter awareness at the same rate as typically developing children.

Speech Development Patterns and Phonological Awareness in Preschool Children

Mann, V.A., and Foy, J.G. (2007). Speech development patterns and phonological awareness in preschool children. Annals of Dyslexia, 57, 51-74.

Researchers hypothesized that children who failed to master production of the early 8 consonants had phonological awareness deficits. Findings: children who made no consonant errors had advanced phonological awareness relative to other children in the study. Both production speech and speech errors, however, were linked with rhyme awareness. This association may help identify preschool children at risk for reading problems.

Link between phonological awareness and speech perception - differences between good and poor readers may lie in the ability to produce phonological representations. Influence of speech perception on reading moderated by phonological awareness. Variance in phoneme identification accounts for significant variance in phoneme deletion (Chiappe et al, 2001). Deficits in speech perception play a causal role in the deficient phonological procession of poor readers and the inability to distinguish phonemes is the link between speech perception and deficient phonological awareness. Some attribute it to short term memory processes (Brady et al, 1989; Mann et al., 1980) others say it is the mental lexicon (Elbro, 96; Fowler & Swainson, 2004). Unclear whether two different impairments or a single common denominator.

Study examines processes involving the mental lexicon: word production vocabulary, naming speed, and judgments about rhymes. Also examines digit span, nonsense word repetition and PA in pseudowords, placing demands on short term memory.

Study focuses on speech production in relation to development of PA. Are speech production problems evident among children who read poorly or those at risk based on family history. Are children with speech & hearing problems prone to reading problems?

Studies populations of delayed, normal, and advanced PA according to articulatory    development and also study ways in which their PA skills relate to patterns of misarticulations. Children w/ sp & hearing problems generally have more reading problems (Menyuk et al., 91; Aram & Hall, 89; Bishop & Adams, 1990)

Delayed talkers are disproportionately often poor readers, have weak phonological awareness, and weak speech perception, though not all develop reading problems.(Paul & Jennings, Ratner, 1994; Scarboough & Dobrich, 1990; Whitehurst et al., 1991, Carroll et al., 2003).

Study would determine the set of consonants that children articulate and describe misarticulations. Many normal misarticulations of preschoolers resolve by school age or earlier in a predictable way. Most correctly produce /m/ but not a well developed /s/. produce variants of the /s/ that isn't phonemically salient in target language, (dentalized or lateralized productions.) Don't usually change the consonant to another (stopping). A delay in outgrowing normal productive errors may reflect phonological problems leading to poor PA and rdg difficulties.

Phonological process errors in disorder studies are referred to as deletion of final consonants, syullable reduction, palatal fronting, velar fronting, consonant harmony, stopping of fricative, and afficates, cluster simplification and liquid simplification.

85% of preschoolers (age 4) in Iowa-Nebraska Articulation Norms Project could pronounce p, b, k, g, t, d, w, m, n, h, j in initial and final positions. Kids with articulation problems less able to produce  r, l, f, v, s, z, Ɵ, ð ( voiceless and voiced /th/) ∫ (/sh/ voiceless as in ship), Ʒ (/zh/ as in exposure), t∫ (/ch/ as in chip), dƷ (ĵ /j/ as in edge or jump)  Normal development involves acquisition of all major phoneme classes by age 3 except for liquids /l/ and /r/, which are more likely to be spoken by age 5, except for sibilants [s] [z] [ʃ] [tʃ] [dʒ] [ʒ] usually acquired by age 7 (without lisps) (Porter and Hodson, 2001). Their analysis identified 3 types of consonant errors atypical among preschoolers: omissions of single consonants, omission of one consonant within a cluster, and substitutions that changed the articulation place or manner: /t/ for /s/, /d/ for /l/, /d/ for /g/  Dit me some dum.

A particular class of consonants misarticulated past a given age give rise to the most abnormalities. Those who didn't catch up in one study (Roberts et al, 1998) misarticulated ethe early acquired phonemes: /p, b, t, d, k, g, w, j/. They were prone to consonant deletion, gliding and stopping. Shriberg 1993 had similar results. Identified a sequence for acquisition of consonantal phonemes based on clustering. The early 8 were /p, b, j, n, w, d, m, h/ the middle 8 were /t, ng, k, g, f, v, ch, j/ and late were /sh, th Voiced & unvoiced, s, z, l, r, zh/. The only distinguishing characteristic between children whos speech didn't normalize and those whose speech did was a nonisignificant trend for the non-normalized group to show lower performance on the early 8 phonemes. Shriberg found 8 sound-change categories that describe over 90% of deleetiona and substitution errors (over age 3) Final consonant deletion, xluster simplification, unstressed syllable deletion and substitution (liquid simplification, palatal fronting, velar fronting & assimilation consonant harmony)  Studies of children who had early and persistent deficits in speech production indicate a trend towards select impairment on early developing phonemes during the preK years. Patters of errors suggest no trend toward delayed children using more of some processes and less of others but do indicate what errors are typical and atypical.

This study questions whether children's errors relate to their level of phonological awareness and bear any relation to other phonological skills like speech perception or working short-term memory. Reading is typically delayed for these children.

Noted the co-occurrence of articulatory problems with early developing sounds and deficient awareness. Weakness in representation may lead them to be less able to judge or manipulate phonological units like rhyming or PA tasks. Advanced children exhibit mature control over consonant articulation and may possess strong ability to represent phonological structure and PA.

Hesketh (2000) studied 3.5-5 yr olds with deficits in articulation (no therapy) and normal scores on language, vocab, nonverbal IQ and hearing. Speech disordered group had lower PA scores on 5 tasks rhyme matching, word-initial matching, blending phonemes, word-initial segmentation and matching, consonant deletion).  Statistically sig differences in subtests wre onset matchng and word-initial segmentation and matching. Older kids with production errors also deficient in letter name knowledge and PA compared to children who were developing normally. Preschool chikdren with history of speech sound disorders shown to have deficient p\PA and LK (Raitano et al., 2004) Rvachew and Grawburg 2006, showed childen with speech sound disorders ahd lower PA skills than normal kids and vocabulary and speech perception skills successfully predicted PA development.

Bertelson, et al., 1998; Hulme, 2002; Hulme et al., 2002; Morais et al., 1986) suggest PA and rhyme awareness skills are separate processes that make differential contributions to reading achievement. Foy & Mann (2001, 2003) accord with such evidence in suggesting that the awareness of rhyme more closely aligned with Ph perception and production abilities where awareness of phonemes relates to literacy and educational exposure.

Hypotheses: speech production linked with measures of early literacy skills

Patterns of consonant errors will predict speech perception, vocabulary, naming and digit span, and their relation to reading and PA as they relate to the representation of phonological structure. In particular, atypical errors may associate with weaker PA and reading and language skills.

Participants 102 kids, 7 preschools or daycares in S. CA, Caucasian, AA, Hisp, Asian, mixed race. Ages 4-6 low to upper middle class, spoke English as primary lang. 13 children at familial risk for reading problems compared to 13 others matched on age, sex bilingual status, vocabulary, and no significant differences on measures.

Subsample of 70 reexamined 3 months later. Report PA and rhyme awareness measures at time 2. All normal development.

Tests: Vocabulary, digit span (working memory), letter knowledge & Phoneme Awareness (pre-literacy skills), rhyme awareness, naming speed, nonword repetition, speech discrimination

Results for hypothesis 1: Speech production will be linked with measures of early literacy skills

Early 8 speech sounds - errors significantly correlated with vocabulary, digit span, letter knowledge, rhyme awareness, naming speed, and speech discrimination

Middle 8 speech sounds - in addition to same early 8 variable correlation, phoneme awareness and nonword repetition significant.

Late 8 speech sounds - vocabulary, digit span, letter knowledge, rhyme awareness, naming speech, nonword repletion, speech discrimination. Children

Delayed group - (n = 25)  familial risk children - 38% made errors on the early 8 sounds compared to 17% not at familial risk.

Typical group - n=65 no errors in early 8 but errors on late 8, and some on middle 8.  46% of children at familial risk in this group; 72% not at familial risk.

Advanced group (n=12) - no deficits on early, middle, or late 8 sounds. Ten had no errors on Goldman Fristoe Test, 15% at familial risk for reading problems in this group compared to 10% not at familial risk.

Children in delayed group had significantly lower scores on expressive vocabulary, verbal short term memory, letter knowledge, rhyme awareness, letter knowledge, speech discrimination, slower naming responses, than children in typical group.

 Children in advanced group significantly higher scores than typical children for rhyme awareness, nonword repetition accuracy, vocabulary, verbal short term memory, rhyming, letter knowledge, speech discrimination, and faster naming responses.

Hypothesis 2 Consonantal errors are related to reading related measures

Most common developmental processes: stridency deletion, stopping, liquid simplification, cluster simplification, palatal fronting, consonant harmony. 

Normal processes that occurred infrequently were initial voicing, final devoicing, velar fronting, deletion of final consonant, syllable reduction.

Special condition of this study: included children advanced in articulation skills who made no errors on their consonant inventory. Their phonological skills were significantly advanced in rhyme awareness compared to peers with articulatory deficits. Superior rhyme awareness appeared to be a characteristic of children with early control of phonemes that are typically not mastered early (the late 8 group).  Evidence from multiple studies suggest that advqanced early speech perception skills predict language development (Kuhl, 2004, 2005).

Preschoolers' Attention to Print During Shared Book Reading.

Evans, M.A., Williamson, K., and Pursoo, T. (2008). Preschoolers' attention to print during shared 

            book reading. Scientific Studies of Reading 12(1), 106-129.

Percentage of time looking at print was 2% in the no pointing condition, however, attention increased with age. In the pointing condition, children looked at print more frequently. When controlling for receptive vocabulary, visual memory, and maturation, emergent orthography and letter-word identification predicted time looking at print and recognition of concepts about print.

Literature highlights: Benefits of shared storybook reading as noted in the literature: enhancement of cognitive and emotional development, interest in books, factual information about the world, enjoyment, oral and written language skills and success in reading. Meta analyses by Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) and Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pellegrini (1995) support positive outcomes on language and literacy development. However, Senechal,  LeFevre, Thomas, and Daley (1998) found that oral language and vocabulary were enhanced by story reading, but they had no effect on acquiring reading skills except where directly taught (parent report of actual letter and word teaching.) Evans, Shaw and Bell (2000) found that the frequency of parent activities linked to teaching letter names, sounds and printing activities predicted knowledge of letter names, letter sounds, and phonological awareness while vocabulary development was related to frequency of shared book reading. Thus, vocabulary growth is a likely outcome but not the development of written language skills. Other studies used eye-tracking to determine the actual time spent looking at print in storybooks while being read to. Children infrequently fixated on the print spending less than 6% of their time looking at the words or 5 seconds out of 2 minutes worth of reading, regardless of the print features, color, and embedding in pictures. (Evans, Saint-Aubin, 2005; Justice, Skibbe, Canning, and Lankford, 2005). In fact, children rarely also comment on print but reserve questions and comments for pictures, story meaning, and word meaning (Shapiro, Anderson, and Anderson, 1997; van Kleeck, 2003; Yaden, Smolkin, and Conlon, 1993). Important note about studies: small sample sizes.

Goals of this study: examine age changes, individual differences, and effect of adult pointing to the words on attention to print in children aged 3-5 yrs during shared reading. This study altered selected print for visual salience. The methods of estimating attention were calculating the percentage of time children spent looking at the print during the entire reading of two books. Also gave children a recognition task to pick out cards that portrayed the altered print and aspects of the illustrations within the stories in order to determine relative attention to elements of the print and illustrations.

Study details

89 children initially in the study but final sample was 76 (equal boy/girl groups) ages 36-73 months at initial testing. Parental questionnaires  indicated mostly middle to upper middle class homes and less than 1/5 low income. 13% mothers & 18% fathers reported post-secondary education.

172 minutes average time per week reading to children. No significant differences between age groups in point to text or time spent reading to children.

Testing materials:

Woodcock-Johnson III Achievement

Measure of emergent orthography knowledge (Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans, and Jared, 2006) assessed knowledge of print and spelling conventions. (paired matches with multiplicity of letters, spacing of letters, scribbles versus letters, letter like forms vs letters, and pictures vs letters with response to question: "Which one would your mommy or teacher be able to read?"

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III

Visual memory skills assessed with visual recognition subtest of british Ability Scales (1983).

 Home literacy Experiences Questionnaire (Evans, Levy, and Jared, 2001).

Results and Conclusions:

In non-pointing groups: Percentage of print-looking time predicted 16% of variance in print target recognition when the following were controlled: vocabulary, visual memory, emergent orthography, word-identification and maturation. No relationship between print-looking time and illustration cards.  Even without the sophisticated eye-tracker, results were replicated for those two studies mentioned above.  Young children spent very little time (6 sec) on avg looking at print  in a 2.5 minute reading however, there was slightly more attention to print among the oldest children. Children's emergent orthography and letter-word identification knowledge predicted variance in the amount of time looking at print, indicating their interest may have been due to emergent literacy skills.

Aspects of print that increased accuracy: icon/stylized elements associated with the print - arrow with detour printed on it. No increased attention to print in speech bubbles in illustrations. Unique tone of voice encouraged attention - children spontaneiously pointing to and imitating sounds from memory when they saw the stylized print, e.g., Whoo whoo! Written in bubblelike letters (logographic response).

Effect of pointing: children in all age groups spent significantly greater percentage of time looking at print than the control but it didn't improve the performance of the 3 yr olds in print recognition, suggesting that children with preliminary concepts about the shape of printed words may be more affected by finger-pointing. Cautious enthusiasm is the author's conclusion rather than this being a method of enhancing attention to print in trade books.

Storybook reading generally is a listening activity while looking at pictures than a time to learn about print. Children don't develop print skills merely from listening to books being read. However, some types of books lend themselves to discussion of print, such as alphabet books. Also, some parent behaviors help children focus on print during storybook reading, namely, finger pointing words while reading. this study did not address the benefits of children attending to print, just noted an increased amount of time looking at the word pages rather than the picture pages. The author suggests that it may be a preliminary way of helping children relate sounds to print if they can already identify letters and have some knowledge of phonemes, citing Ehri and Sweet, 1991; Uhry, 1999).  On the other hand, adult mediated printing and writing activities substantially enhance print knowledge in young children (Aram and Levin, 2004).

Parental Involvement in the Development of Children's Reading Skill: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study

Senechal, M. & Lefevre, J. (2002). Parental involvement in the development of children's reading 

                 skill: A five-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.

Children ordinarily exposed to 2 types of literacy experiences at home: informal lit activities, i.e., those with goal of sharing the message in print, e.g., story reading where parent elaborates on meaning of a text and child listens and/or engages in questions and observations; formal literacy activities - parent and child focus on the print, e.g., alphabet book, talk about letters, reading and writing words. Children whose parents believe in more structured literacy experiences tend to have stronger emergent literacy skills than less structured, more informal ones.

Objectives of this study: assess importance of storybook reading & parent reports of more formal teaching activities, assess relationship between early literacy experiences and reading acquisition, assess relation between early lit and fluent reading. cohorts of K and 1^st grades followed up until gr. 3.

Details of study

• 110 kindergarten children mixed ages of 4 & 5 and 58 first graders from Ottawa, Canada school district.
• English speaking; K curriculum emphasized social skills, mostly Caucasian.
• Parent education used as a control factor. Details: 91% of parents in the study reported having higher education beyond high school (above national percentage (56%) but closer to the norm for Ottawa residents 70%).
• Literacy Experience Measures: Parent report on literacy experiences (1-5 scale from never to very often); children's literature titles knowledge measured - included pseudotitles; parent questionnaire re: home literacy experiences including storybook reading, number of children's books in the home, age at which they started to read to child, library visits, child initiated shared reading (measures didn't predict child outcomes so only storybook exposure used as index of reading); children shown illustrations from books and measured for memory of title - showed criterion validity as a measure of children's vocabulary - administered only to 1^st gr cohort; parents exposure to adult literature used as indicator of their literacy level-used Stanovich-Cunningham Author Recognition Test.
• Receptive Lang, phonological awareness, emergent literacy, analytic intelligence measures: PPVT-R for vocab; listening comp from SESAT (Stanford early school achievement test) included single measure of phonological awareness in a sound categorization task where children mateched words based on onsets or rhymes; emergent lit skills measured with Concepts about print test (Clay), alphabet knowledge, decoding test requiring reading simple consonant-vowel-consonant words where non-readers asked to sound out and blend if they didn't know the words; invented spelling measure designed to capture # of phonemes recorded in spellings; analytic intelligence measured with animal house subtest of Weschler P & P scale of Intelligence-R (1989).
• Reading measures - end of gr 1: Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (1992) tested on both word reading and reading comp. with letter-word identification and passage comp subtests of Woodcock-Johnson-R
• Reading measures - end of gr 3: vocab and comp subtests of Gates-MacGinitie Reading tests because it was administered as a standardized test to all gr 3 children in school district

Results

Statistically significant correlations between phonological awareness and the following measures:

Kindergarten Cohort

Letter knowledge

Invented spelling

Decoding

Child analytic intelligence

Reading in gr 1

Reading in gr 3

1^st gr Cohort

Child book exposure in gr 1

Reading in grade 3

• Children's phonological awareness explained 30% of variance while receptive language predicted no variance in emergent literacy skills. Storybook exposure predicted receptive language and parent teaching predicted emergent literacy.
• Receptive language not related to reading in gr 1 but emergent literacy & phonological awareness were. 
• Early storybook exposure, not parent report of teaching reading skills enhanced children's vocabulary and listening comprehension both of which facilitate later fluent reading.
• Measures of early home literacy experiences and parent teaching were uncorrelated. Similar findings by Evans et al. (2000). Experiences related to concepts about print were associated with the development of children's receptive language and teaching about reading and letters were associated with the development of emergent literacy skills.
• Parent involvement was not directly related to later reading development but there was an indirect relationship between the two.
• Receptive language and early literacy skills both related to phonological awareness. Receptive language and emergent literacy were not directly related to each other. Variables directly related to reading skills at the end of first grade were tied to PA and emergent literacy skills but for grade 3, the strongest correlation was receptive language and PA. Children's exposure to books at the end of gr 1 was directly related to reading in gr 4, consistant with  Cunningham & Stanovich findings in 91 & 98.

Implications:

• Parent role using storybook reading in the development of language skills reaffirmed. Parents should read to children before and after they acquire decoding skills. The relation between parents reports of teaching and children's early literacy consistent with perspective that home experiences predict acquisition of academic skills; however, little is known about the context of parent instruction of letters and words. Cunningham and Stanovich (1993) found that book exposure in gr 1 was correlated with reading skill. The authors propose further research into the contribution of continued parent-child reading vs child's own independent reading in the development of reading skills.
• Various pathways that lead to fluent reading in the early grades appear to be rooted in the early literacy experiences of the home.

Cunningham, A. & Stanovich, K. (1993). The impact of print exposure on word recognition. In 

           J.L. Metsala and L. C. Ehri (Eds), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 235-261).  

           Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Evans, M., Shaw, D., & Bell. (2000). Home literacy activities and their influence on early literacy 

           skills, Canadian Journal of experimental Psychology, 54, 65-75.