Summary
Several factors that could affect child’s learning and achievement includes individual characteristics of children, school and teaching aspects and home environment. Thus, this paper focuses on Home Literacy Environment on children’s linguistic abilities. Following a brief introduction to the paper and its abstract provides an overview that Home Literacy environment does bring influence to children’s linguistic competencies, in reading and spelling and their precursors. According to Bronfenbenner’s ecological theory, structural characteristics of a family such as the socioeconomic status (SES) or migration background influence the HLE, which then bring impacts on children’s early competencies (reference). It is predicted that children who know many letters are more likely to succeed in later literacy tasks at school, which helps when children start learning to read and need to connect phonemes to graphemes. Children with better early letter knowledge often outperform other children in reading and spelling competencies later on. Thus, it is important for families to support children’s emerging vocabulary and letter knowledge, particularly in the years before school. Reading to children also supports children’s learning, where reader interacts with the child, asks questions, encourages remarks given by then children, expands on the text. Other important aspects in the child’s learning include the quality of the book, number of books at home or the reading or TV watching behavior of the parents. The results of the intensive 9-week family literacy program show that learners’ letter knowledge and their ability to infer meaning was statistically significant for the intervention group when compared with first language English-speaking children in the intervention and control groups, and English language learners in the control group. The dialogic reading introduced to parents somehow improved the linguistic development of children in comparison with children with no such experiences. The interventions focused on the development of vocabulary, letter knowledge, and rapid naming of pictures. The interventions, however increase the quality of HLE and better support children’s linguistic competencies when compared with families not participating in the intervention.
The research sample consisted of 125 German children, with mean age 5:5. The Wegener scale was used to determine the participants’ SES score, based on parental occupational prestige. The SES score of this sample was slightly above average in comparison to other German samples. The testing was carried out in two sessions. The first testing started in September 2012, while the second assessment was repeated in January 2013.
The intervention process consisted of two parts. The first intervention was a parents’ evening, which lasted for about 40 minutes. 3 evening meetings were held in different locations on 3 different days in 1 week. Parents were provided with general info about 1) the importance of the home learning environment 2) parents’ and families’ important role in contributing to child development from birth to school entry 3) specific suggestions on how to improve children’s learning environment. Parents were then invited to take part in the second part of the intervention. The second intervention was a 30-minute session with one child, with his/her parent, that was facilitated by a trained research assistant. Firstly, parent had to read first three pages of a suitable German children’s book, observed by the assistant. The observer noted how the parent’s reading aligned with Dialogic reading approach. Elements that aligned with the approach were pointed out as strengths. The parent may also try to improve book-reading aspects with the recommendations made by the assistant. At the end of the session, parent had the opportunity to ask questions and each child was presented with the book as a gift. There were 4 groups involved in this research; 1) no intervention 2) parent evening only 3) intervention only 4) parent evening and intervention.
This research focuses on testing children on their vocabulary, which was tested using the Revised Vocabulary Test for 3 to 5 year olds. Children were required to name 40 pictures, including nouns and verbs. Early letter knowledge was also tested where children were presented with 12 most common German letters and they had to name them. Then, children were required to identify easy pictures in a random order three times. It is to test their fast access to long term memory, or rapid naming. The intelligence was also tested at t1 and the children were required to identify the odd one out in 4/5 pictures. Results shown that for vocabulary, girls outperformed boys in t2 and they learnt more new words than boys overall. In early letter knowledge, results showed that no statistically significant impact of the intervention was found, girls outperformed boys and on average, children knew only one letter more at t2. In rapid naming, children took about 5 second less at t2 overall.
The discussion part of this research shows that non-intensive intervention helped parents to improve HLE, and supported children’s linguistic competencies in a short period of time. The group who attended parent evening only showed the greatest gain in letter knowledge, mainly because training in grapheme-morpheme was only mentioned at the parents’ evening. Groups with single intervention was greatest in vocabulary gain. A statistically gain in rapid naming speed due to the intervention was not expected, as this ability is fairly hard to train. However, non-significant effects sizes were found when comparing non-participating group and the intervention groups.
Limitations- as there were only small sample taken, it could lead to non-significant results, as comparisons were not always possible. Furthermore, there were no follow up in the analyses, so no assurance that the gain in children’s competencies was sustained. Next, there were no measures of reading and spelling were tested as children had not started school yet, thus cannot be certain children did start school better prepared. On another note, analysing some families with lower SES did not make much difference, as it only reduced the number of participants. Finally, replications of this study are needed in order to validate the results, and samples testing different background and more research in this field must be done.
Strengths – several strengths were found from this study despite the limitations. Firstly, non-intensive interventions can help to improve the HLE and support a child’s linguistic development. Results also show that giving parents relevant information about the learning environment and about dialogic reading can contribute to a more favourable learning environment. The full intervention group showed greater gains in linguistic competencies across all measures. Furthermore, HLE and children’s linguistic competencies always have room for improvement, even if the family already has a favourable HLE. Finally, non-intensive interventions can further increase high levels of HLE, as children benefit from there.
Outcomes/Conclusion – this study helped parents to use dialogic reading with their children, and supported development of HLE and vocabulary gains. It also shows that improvement seems possible with little cost and effort. Non-intensive intervention approach is more relaxing yet still provides results, and that intensive is not always needed. Moreover, meaningful effects were found for development of letter knowledge and rapid naming. In conclusion, studies like this do make a difference to a child’s learning and can improve multiple aspects within children’s language
This paper presents a critical evaluation of the research article entitled “With a little help: improving kindergarten children’s vocabulary by enhancing the home literacy environment” by Frank Niklas and Wolfgang Schneider. The research question of this study was to investigate whether a non-intensive, short-term intervention is sufficient to support parents in providing more favorable HLEs and thereby to support their children’s linguistic competencies. This paper provides a brief description and discussion on the summary, literature, methods, results, strengths and limitations and conclusions of the study conducted. Possible further research questions will also be mentioned at the end of the paper. In terms of the writing, the research article is excellently written, with almost no flaws to be found.
The research paper focuses on the extent to which interventions with little cost and effort could bring improvement to children’s linguistic competencies. It is found out that early linguistic competencies are necessary for children’s reading and writing abilities and thus for a successful school career. One way to improve children’s linguistic competencies is by enhancing the HLE they live in. It is proven that family literacy programs are successful in improving it; however, it is fairly intensive and costly. This study, therefore found ways to improve both HLE and linguistic competencies, which is by non-intensive interventions.
In the introductory part of the paper, the author clearly stated the research question of the paper, which was to present an argument that non intensive intervention is sufficient to improve children’s linguistic competencies, and whether this short-term intervention can provide a more favorable Home Literacy Environment. This paper is relevant to the field of FLA as it helps children in acquiring their first language more naturally when they enter elementary school. It also helps in implementing this kind of intervention among parents, thus helps them in guiding the children in acquiring the language as their first language and will indirectly make the learning more efficient and children could comprehend faster when learning in school. Important keywords are also included in the paper; which readers need to first understand before reading the whole article in order to understand clearly about what the writers are trying to deliver in the whole research paper. The keywords include home literacy environment, non-intensive intervention, family literacy programs, linguistic competencies and pre-school children. However, the specialized terms were not usefully defined in the paper; instead, the readers need to define the words themselves.
Authors’ central arguments were to find out whether interventions with little cost and effort could help children and parents in improving HLE and linguistic competencies. They are clearly stated in the introduction as a research question, and supported by several large scale studies mentioned in the paper in the subtopics of the paper; predictors of reading performance and home literacy environment and linguistic competencies. Most of the previous studies are focused on HLE on precursors of literacy acquisition and on family literacy programs. The paper makes use of previous studies to support the present research. There are several sources that makes the study more credible such as that of Torgesen (2002) and Piasta, Petscher and Justice (2002) whose studies support the fact that children who are readily familiar with many letters and know meaning of all the words they are reading will learn faster and more accurately than those who do not. The effectiveness of family literacy programs were also proven by the researchers, where they mentioned a study by Harper, Platt and Pelletier (2011), which the study had statistically significant results when comparing first language English speaking children and English language learners. Niklas and Schneider made use of core studies dated from 1988 to 2013 which is appropriate for the research because of the combination of old and new views on the subject.
In terms of research methodology, the materials and methodologies of the research were clearly outlined where the authors did tests and gave out questionnaires to the sample. They also listed all of the tests and scales they used to carry out the results (Wegener scale, Revised Vocabulary Test, Columbia Mental Maturity scale and Likert scale). Even though all the methods were listed clearly, it might be helpful if researchers mentioned the expected results, as if there was any, comparisons could be made, which is to compare if the results accurately achieve the aim. Niklas and Schneider described participants clearly, as they include a method of sample selection appropriately, where the data of participants’ SES scores were also collected to ensure that the sample was above average. However, as there were only a small sample in the study, it brings to consequence that most of the results were non-significant when compared with other groups. Participants were also provided with adequate information about the importance of the home learning environment, this is to make sure that parents know of what they are venturing into. It is a very useful idea brought by Niklas and Schneider, as it entails parents in not being too clueless when participating in any or both of the interventions. Methods used for measuring results were appropriate and clearly stated, where they used SPSS 21 for all analyses.
The results of the study were distinctively presented, where the results are consistent with the aims of the research mentioned in the introduction. The most significant effect sizes can mostly be found among the non-participating groups and the groups who had full interventions. This study proved that girls outperformed boys in most of the tests; vocabulary and early letter knowledge. The findings are clearly presented using few supporting data; figures and a table. Even though Table 1, which explains descriptive statistics and correlational analyses, is fairly hard to comprehend, they were all integrated with the texts written and are all in logical order thus making it helpful to be understood.
The strengths of this research paper include the presence of real experience and direct approach to the participants, which leads to time and cost efficiency and more effective in terms of its delivery. Small sample sizes is also one of the many strengths of this research, as it contributes to uncomplicated results computing. It is noted that the research also acts as an eye opener, a revelation to parents where they are exposed to the importance of HLE, later using HLE to improve their children’s learning environment. On the other hand, the limitation of this research is the fact that small sample could also be one of the weaknesses, as there was only a small sample taken which leads to non-significant results. No follow ups to the study also lead to no assurance that the gain in children’s competencies is sustained over time. It might have been helpful to provide more details on the later competencies, to prove that the interventions are really sufficient to support parents in providing more favorable HLEs.
In conclusion, the research has contributed very relevant inputs to the existing fields that focused on the subject. It is shown that non-intensive, short-term intervention is sufficient to support parents in providing HLEs that are more favorable and thereby to support their children’s linguistic competencies. While there still some limitations in the study, it can still be considered to have served the real purpose of the research.
This paper has responded to the question whether a non-intensive, short-term intervention is sufficient to support parents in providing more favorable HLEs and thereby to support their children’s linguistic competencies, which also seeks to further discussion surrounding in this issue. Some questions could be posed for more focused research in the area that is set in this paper. Three further possible research questions that could be raised from the findings are; 1) to investigate whether children from different backgrounds will vary in gaining and improving the HLE and linguistic competencies from the non-intensive interventions 2) to investigate which interventions (intensive or non-intensive) provide more favourable HLEs and thereby to support their children’s linguistic competencies 3) to investigate why vocabulary gain was the greatest among all other competencies; letter knowledge and rapid naming 4) to investigate whether children with below average SES could achieve the same results as children with above average SES. These further questions are possible to be raised as future research studies because of the existing base from the current study. It is believed that continued research that draws on HLEs and the interventions holds promise for an improved learning environment for both parents and children.