Session Information
31 SES 11, Home Literacy Activities and (Academic) Language Skills as Predictors for the Educational Outcomes of Mono- and Multilinguals: A Longitudinal Perspective
Symposium
Contribution
Building on research that has revealed exposure to particular genres of language use at home and in preschool to be a strong predictor of academic language development during the preschool years (Leseman et al. 2007; Scheele et al. 2012), this paper examines the long term impact of early academic language on reading and mathematics achievement from first through fifth grade of primary school. Focusing on the Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch children, the paper further examines the role of academic language skills acquired in the first language for reading and math development in primary school. A sample of 48 Dutch, 34 Moroccan-Dutch, and 49 Turkish-Dutch children was followed from age 3 to age 11. At age 6, story and instruction comprehension tasks were used to assess children’s emerging receptive academic language skills in the first and second language. In addition, receptive vocabulary in the first and second language, phonological awareness and letter knowledge were assessed. Dependent measures were reading comprehension and mathematics achievement, assessed each year from first to fifth grade with longitudinally calibrated curriculum-based tests of a widely used student monitoring system. Multi-sample conditional latent growth curve models were used to investigate the effects of first and second academic language skills measured at age 6 as predictors of reading and mathematics development from age 7 to 11. The results show that the initial differences between the three groups in reading comprehension in grade 1 become slightly smaller towards at the end of primary school only, whereas the initial differences in mathematics in grade 1 tend to decrease more. Preliminary analyses of the data indicate that early academic language skills in Dutch positively predict children’s initial level in reading comprehension and mathematics in all groups as well as in reading comprehension during primary school in Dutch children. No clear effects of early academic language skills on growth in reading and math were found for the Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch children. First language academic skills negatively predict the initial level in reading comprehension and mathematics for the Moroccan children, but positively for the Turkish children. These findings suggest that primary school instruction is more effective in leveling differences between ethnic-cultural groups in mathematics than in reading comprehension and emphasize the importance of concerted effort in the early years in order to create more equal opportunities. Further, the preliminary results suggest that supporting first language development can contribute to academic development in primary school.
References
Leseman, P. P. M., Scheele, A. F., Mayo, A.Y., & Messer, M. H. (2007). Home literacy as a special language environment to prepare children for school. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 10(3), 334-355. Scheele, A.F., Leseman, P.P.M., Mayo, A.Y, & Elbers, E. (2012). Relations of home language and literacy with three-year-old’s emergent academic language in narrative and instruction genres. The Elementary School Journal, 112(3), 419-444.
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