Beginning Literacy with Language: Young Children Learning at Home and School

Beginning Literacy with Language: Young Children Learning at Home and School edited by David K. Dickinson and Patton O. Tabors Baltimore, MD, Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. , 2001, 409 pp, 29. 95 (softcover). Beginning Literacy with Language describes the methods and results of the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy. The study, which began in 1987, is the product of a collaborative effort involving researchers and educators at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Tufts University, Clark University, and the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts. The primary interest of the investigators is the relationship between extended discourse during the preschool period and later language and literacy outcomes in children of low-income families. The investigators define extended discourse as “talk that requires participants to develop understandings beyond the here and now and that requires the use of several utterances or turns to build a linguistic structure, such as in explanations, narratives, or pretend. ” In the Home-School Study, 84 English-speaking families with 3-year-old children eligible for either Head Start or subsidized child care or health care were enrolled. During the preschool period, families received yearly assessments, performed by observation and interview at home and at school, of the child’s exposure to language and literacy. In kindergarten, 74 of the children received detailed assessments of language and early literacy. Although more than 50 students received assessments of progress in language and reading comprehension in fourth and seventh grade, the focus of the book is on outcomes when the children were in kindergarten. The book is tightly structured and well written. After an introduction to the overall study design, the book is divided into three sections. The first section provides evidence of the impact of parent-child verbal interaction and extended discourse on kindergarten outcomes. The second section provides evidence of the impact of teacher-child verbal interaction and extended discourse on kindergarten outcomes. In the final section, the investigators try to determine the ways in which home and school interact in influencing child language-development outcomes. In each section, background is provided about the theories and evidence concerning the effects of home and school factors that play a role in child language development. Statistical methods and results are explained in clear, nontechnical prose, as well as through reader-friendly tables and charts. Examples of specific verbal interactions are provided throughout the book for four “portrait children, ” their parents, and their teachers. These examples highlight the different styles of parenting and teaching that were observed by the investigators and help the reader to understand the meaning of the data in real-life terms. At the end of each chapter, readers are given practical suggestions for ways in which the results might be applied to their own interactions with children, either as parents or as teachers. The book presents many important findings. One finding is that it is not just the quantity of language exposure that matters; the quality of language exposure is also extremely important. For example, during reading aloud, making inferences (e. g. , “Why do you think the caterpillar had a stomach ache? ”) was found to be more important in predicting kindergarten outcomes than describing things in the here and now (e. g. , labeling pictures). Another finding is that the extended discourse is associated with improved child developmental outcomes across activity type (e. g. , reading, meals, playtime, and group activities), both at home and at school. Indeed, language exposure, both at home and at preschool, was found to be predictive of language outcomes in kindergarten, and the effects were found to be additive. Another finding is the lack of adequate literacy-related activities in many preschools. For example, group reading activities made up less than 3% of total preschool time for the majority of classrooms for both the 3- and 4-year-old children. Finally, the authors present evidence that high quality preschool can, to some extent, make up for insufficient language exposure in the home. I would have been interested in seeing more detail concerning the follow-up beyond kindergarten. The authors provide evidence of the importance of kindergarten achievement in predicting reading comprehension and language development in fourth and seventh grade. However, they then do not provide information about whether there is a direct link between preschool language and literacy activities and those later outcomes. Presumably, these details will be made available in the future. The results of the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy represent a considerable advancement in our understanding of the factors in homes and schools that promote development in preschool children. By providing analyses of verbal interactions, both at home and at school, the study makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this area. Beginning Literacy with Language should be considered required reading for professionals with an interest in early child development, including educators, researchers, psychologists, health care providers, and policy makers. Although the book has a scientific orientation, it goes out of its way to explain both study-design issues and statistical analyses with informative, jargon-free language. As a result, I believe that this book will also be of interest to parents, regardless of previous background in research.