Parental involvement in the development of children's reading skill: a five-year longitudinal study.

Full Abstract

This article presents the findings of the final phase of a 5-year longitudinal study with 168 middle- and upper middle-class children in which the complex relations among early home literacy experiences, subsequent receptive language and emergent literacy skills, and reading achievement were examined. Results showed that children's exposure to books was related to the development of vocabulary and listening comprehension skills, and that these language skills were directly related to children's reading in grade 3. In contrast, parent involvement in teaching children about reading and writing words was related to the development of early literacy skills. Early literacy skills directly predicted word reading at the end of grade 1 and indirectly predicted reading in grade 3. Word reading at the end of grade 1 predicted reading comprehension in grade 3. Thus, the various pathways that lead to fluent reading have their roots in different aspects of children's early experiences.

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Author information

Author/s: Sénéchal, Monique (M); LeFevre, Jo-Anne (JA);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada. monique_senechal(-atsign-)carleton.ca

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Child development (Child Dev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2002 Mar-Apr; vol 73 (issue 2) : pp 445-60

Dates: Created 2002/04/12; Completed 2002/10/24; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 11949902, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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