by the Editor     Poring over the works of Dr. Seuss, the adventures of the Berenstain Bears or exploring the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen with a child has always been a great parent-child bonding exercise.  But, according to George Georgiou, a University of Alberta professor in educational psychology, it is instrumental for English-speaking children if they are to acquire the language skills, particularly comprehension, essential to their future reading ability.

Dr. Georgiou says the home literacy environment – ie., what parents do at home in terms of literacy – as well as motivation, predict children's various initial literacy skills, such as letter knowledge and vocabulary. These skills, in turn, ultimately predict future reading ability.

A new study by researchers from Perth’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research provides more evidence that reading books to young children and helping them visually to follow the story improves a child’s language.

 “We looked at a range of factors for 2188 children, including joint attention, book-reading, child vocabulary, child temperament, maternal age, maternal education, parenting, number of siblings in the home, household income and community socio-economic status,” says lead author, Dr  Brad Farrant.

“Our findings indicate that higher levels of parent-child book reading are associated with significantly better child language (vocabulary) development.  “Children with more educated mothers have larger vocabularies because they engage in more parent-child book reading.”

Dr Farrant said the results add to the body of evidence that parents play a major role in children’s early language development. “Combining the findings of our study with previous research suggests that interventions targeting children’s early language development would be well served by focussing on book reading as early as possible in children’s lives,” Dr Farrant said.

Challenge of English language for students

Orthography is the part of the study of language dealing with letters and spelling. Professor Georgiou points out that English is an orthographically inconsistent language; in other words, letters can have more than one sound each. Because of this, he says, children learning English "need someone to show them the letters, teach them the letter sounds, and play with letter magnets on the fridge.

"We have found that in English, you need a rich home literacy environment. It's absolutely necessary," he says.
But that's not the case in other languages. Georgiou notes that students are able to learn to read faster in languages such as Greek and Finnish, because there is one-to-one correspondence between a letter and its sounds. This difference with English, he says, implies that Greek or Finnish parents do not need to read as frequently to their children to give them an edge on learning the language. Simply put, Greek or Finnish children will eventually learn to read regardless of how rich the home literacy environment may be.

“In English, having someone read to you frequently as a child, explaining what the meaning of words are and playing around with the letters, makes a big difference as to whether you will become a good reader."
Without that learning support and because of the inconsistencies of the English language, English-speaking children run the risk of falling behind at least two years in terms of their reading skill when compared to children learning to read in languages with a direct relationship between letters and sounds, he said. But, if mum and dad don't have the time to invest in reading to their children and still want them to succeed with language development, then educational programs and multimedia tools, such as spelling programs or games, may be an alternative.

Studying language for success

“Parents from all backgrounds can help ensure their children have sound language skills at school entry and beyond by reading to them throughout the preschool years,” says Dr. Farrant.

Parent-child picture book reading provides an excellent opportunity for vocabulary expansion by learning word-object mapping in a more structured setting and involves pointing gestures, joint attention and verbal labelling.

There are key elements parents should focus on to promote the success of their children as active readers, Professor Georgiou advises. Foremost, reading to your children is vital, as is specific exercises and games to teach them letter names and sounds. Finally, having role models as a motivation to read, whether it be a sports celebrity reading to a classroom full of kids or a parent at bedtime, is also highly important, says Georgiou.

"Build their motivation. If your child sees you reading at home, that sends a message to that child that you value reading."

Link:

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