The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a…

Two experiments involving 80 4-year olds were conducted to assess how children who differ in vocabulary knowledge learn new vocabulary incidentally from listening to stories read aloud. Results clarify the role of active responding by demonstrating that verbal and nonverbal responses enhance vocabulary acquisition. (SLD)

Examined the effects of infant age on parent-infant interactions during picture-book reading. Subjects were 3 groups of parent-infant dyads with infants aged 9, 17, and 27 months. Found that parents reading to younger infants used more attention-recruiting verbalizations and more elaborations, compared with parents reading to older infants, who…

Researchers, parents, and teachers have suggested that the home environment is a likely source of experiences that can enhance the development of oral language and early literacy skills. This longitudinal study examined relations among home literacy factors, subsequent language and early literacy skills, and reading acquisition. Assessments…

Examined early home literacy experiences, receptive language and emergent literacy skills, and reading achievement. Found that children's book exposure related to vocabulary development and listening comprehension, and that these skills related directly to grade 3 reading. Parents' literacy teaching related to early literacy skills, which…

Assesses whether preschool children learn new vocabulary from a single reading of a storybook and whether certain conversational devices used by parents during joint book reading facilitate vocabulary growth. Finds that, although receptive vocabulary learning was robust, there was no evidence of differential learning of vocabulary under different…

Presents findings from the first phase of a longitudinal study examining the development of articulation quality and specific phoneme awareness during the fourth year of life. Articulation and phoneme awareness of /r/ and a control phoneme were assessed for 80 3-year-old children. (Author/JL)

Examined effects of two types of storybook reading experiences on acquisition of vocabulary of 36 preschoolers behind chronological age in expressive vocabulary. Found that children in the dialogic-reading condition made significantly larger gains in vocabulary introduced in the books, as well as gains on a standardized expressive vocabulary test,…

A 5-year longitudinal study examined the relations among home literacy experience, language, and literacy development in a middle-class sample. Findings indicate that those with highest exposure to reading aloud at home demonstrated advantages in spelling, decoding, and alphabet knowledge through grade 3. Recommendations urge frequent home…

The relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness were examined in a sample of 97 typically developing children ages 48 to 66 months. Of these 97 children, 46 were assessed twice at ages 4 and 5 years. Children completed two tasks for each of the three skills, assessing these abilities for the target phoneme /r/…

A study examined whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills provided by parents would enhance the language skills and emergent literacy of 47 first-grade children. Hierarchical regression analyses that controlled for parents' print exposure, and children's age and analytical intelligence showed that at the…

Examines whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills reported by middle-class parents were related to oral language skills and written language skills of kindergarten children. Shows that storybook exposure explained statistically significant unique variance in children's oral language skills but not in…

Proposes an alternative view to emergent literacy whereby it is a separate construct from oral language and metalinguistic skills. Also proposes that emergent literacy is composed of two distinct components: children's conceptual knowledge and children's early procedural knowledge of writing and reading. (Contains 60 references and 5 tables.) (GCP)