Differential effects of home literacy experiences on the development of oral and written language

WE EXAMINED whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills reported by middle class parents were related to the oral-language skills (receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and phoneme awareness) and the written-language skills (concepts about book reading, alphabet knowledge, reading CVC words, and invented spelling) of children in kindergarten (n = 110) and Grade 1 (n = 47). Hierarchical regression analyses that controlled for parents' print exposure and children's age and analytic intelligence showed that storybook exposure explained statistically significant unique variance in children's oral-language skills but not in their written-language skills. In contrast, parent teaching explained statistically significant unique variance in children's written-language skills but not in their oral-language skills. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that storybook exposure may enhance children's oral-language skills whereas additional support in the form of teaching may be necessary to enhance written-language skills. At the end of Grade 1, children's oral and written language performance accounted for 20% of the variance in word reading, but storybook exposure and parent teaching did not account for additional statistically significant unique variance. These findings suggest that the association between early home literacy experiences and later reading skills may be mediated through children's oral-and written-language skills.