Poster #77 - Influence of Young English Learners’ Home Print Exposure on Models of Reading

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of home literacy environments for the development of children’s early reading skills (e.g., Bus et al., 1995; Mol & Bus, 2011). For example, parent-child book reading is related to emergent literacy and literacy achievement (e.g., Bus et al., 1995, Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). For students learning English as an additional language (i.e., English learners, or ELs), these family and home influences may be even more crucial to investigate, as ELs demonstrate a persistent reading achievement gap when compared with their native English-speaking peers (NCES, 2018). Therefore, the research questions were: For young English learners: (a) do the relationships among word identification, reading comprehension, and general literacy achievement vary by the amount print exposure at home, and (b) are there overall reading performance differences based on the amount of print exposure at home?

Participants included 94 ELs in grades K-1. Children completed the Measures of Academic Progress for Primary Grades (MAP-PG; NWEA, 2014) reading test to measure general literacy achievement and Letter-Word Identification (LWID), Word Attack (WA) and Passage Comprehension (PC; all from Woodcock et al., 2004) to measure specific aspects of reading achievement. Parents completed a family background questionnaire, including home language exposure, literacy practices, and demographics questions.

The amount of print exposure was based on the number of reported books (English and Spanish) in the home. Three groups were created based on print exposure: low, moderate, and high. Because of the small number of ELs (N = 17), the low group was not included in subsequent analyses. Regression analysis were conducted for the moderate (N = 51) and high groups (N = 43) using LWID, WA, and PC scores as predictors of MAP-PG scores (see Table 1). For moderate print exposure, the model was significant F(3, 47) = 18.27, p < .001, adj. R2 = .51. LWID was the strongest predictor for MAP-PG scores, p < .037. The model for the high print exposure group was also significant F(3, 39) = 23.89, p < .001, adj. R2 = .62. PC was the strongest predictor for MAP-PG scores, p < .035.

Independent t-tests were run to compare children’s performance on all reading measures based on home print exposure, but none of these difference were significant (p = .227 to .914). Exploratory analyses were conducted to examine whether other home literacy factors related to print exposure demonstrating a significant difference in the number of days per week someone read with the child between the high (M = 5.23 days) and moderate (M = 4.43 days) print exposure groups, F(1, 92) = 4.39, p < .040.

While there were not significant achievement differences between young ELs with moderate and high print exposure at home, results did suggest that young ELs with high print exposure may rely on developmentally different early reading skills (comprehension vs. word recognition; cf. Chall, 1996). Children with higher print exposure also, on average, spent more days/week reading with parents. This, and other family aspects, likely play an important role in children’s literacy development.

Authors

• Daniela Avelar, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adrian Pasquarella, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Austin Jennings, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Steve Amendum, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Mary Bratsch-Hines, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lynne Vernon-Feagans, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cheryl Varghese, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leslie Babinski, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author