Parents’ reading-related knowledge and children’s reading acquisition

Abstract

Teacher reading-related knowledge (phonological awareness and phonics knowledge) predicts student reading, however little is known about the reading-related knowledge of parents. Participants comprised 70 dyads (children from kindergarten and grade 1 and their parents). Parents were administered a questionnaire tapping into reading-related knowledge, print exposure, storybook reading, and general cultural knowledge. Children were tested on measures of letter-word knowledge, sound awareness, receptive vocabulary, oral expression, and mathematical skill. Parent reading-related knowledge showed significant positive links with child letter-word knowledge and sound awareness, but showed no correlations with child measures of mathematical skill or vocabulary. Furthermore, parent reading-related knowledge was not associated with parents' own print exposure or cultural knowledge, indicating that knowledge about English word structure may be separate from other cognitive skills. Implications are discussed in terms of improving parent reading-related knowledge to promote child literacy.

‘What does an O say when there's no E at the end?’ Parents' reading‐related knowledge and feedback during child‐to‐parent reading

“…Although both studies (Ladd et al, 2011;Segal & Martin-Chang, 2018) noted significant links between parental reading-related knowledge and children's reading abilities, neither offered insight into how parents with higher or lower reading-related knowledge interacted with their children. Thus, the impetus for the present investigation was to bridge this gap in the literature by observing parents' feedback when they helped their children's read.…”

“…It is now well established that even proficient adult readers struggle when asked to manipulate small segments of language (e.g., Joshi et al, 2009;Ladd, Martin-Chang, & Levesque, 2011;Moats & Foorman, 2003;Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2003). For instance, when asked to count phonemes or identify irregularly spelled words, it is not uncommon for parents (Ladd et al, 2011) and teachers to perform quite poorly (Bos, Mather, Dickson, Podhajski, & Chard, 2001;Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2009;Ladd et al, 2011;Moats, 1999). Despite the challenges adults face, the last three decades of research has highlighted the important contribution of content knowledge when teaching children to read (e.g., Moats & Foorman, 2003;Piasta, Connor, Fishman, & Morrison, 2009;Shulman, 1987).…”

“…For example, Reading Rockets, a website that provides strategies and activities to be used in the home and the classroom, has an entire section dedicated to helping children play with the sounds of language (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, n.d.). However, even with these efforts in place (e.g., Reading & Van Deuren, 2007;Savage et al, 2003), dividing words into phonemes remains difficult for many parents and teachers (Joshi et al, 2009;Ladd et al, 2011;McCutchen & Berninger, 1999;Moats, 1999;Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2003). In fact, it has long been recognised that individual speech sounds in words are hard to hear because they occur so quickly in running speech and are often coarticulated (Bentin, 1992;Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974).…”

“…Ladd et al () were the first to study parents' reading‐related knowledge and its association with children's reading skills. Working with a sample of 70 children in Kindergarten and Grade 1, Ladd and colleagues found that parents' reading‐related knowledge was significantly associated with children's performances in letter–word and phonemic awareness tasks but not with their mathematics or vocabulary skills; these findings support a domain‐specific contribution of parents' reading‐related knowledge (specific to parents' knowledge of phonics and phonemic awareness) to the same skills in their children.…”

“…In this study, parents were given a reading‐related knowledge questionnaire that measured phoneme counting, syllable counting, syllable classification, and identification of irregularly spelled words (cf. Ladd et al, ; Segal & Martin‐Chang, ). A novel component of the present investigation involved observations of parents and their children during a reading session.…”