Investigating the Relationship between Pragmatic Language Development and Early Childhood Education: a Correlationalstudy on a Sample of Saudi Female Preschoolers and Nonpreschoolers

Abstract

Purpose: To see if pragmatic language development PLD is really associated with early childhood education EChE or vice versa, and if the preschoolers' group will perform pragmatically better than the non-preschoolers' group due to enrollment in EChE in the Arabic version of the test of pragmatic language TOPL-2. Method: Thirty Saudi female pupils with normal abilities were purposefully selected and divided into two groups where 15 were identified as preschoolers and 15 as non-preschoolers, in the age range of 6-7 and who were attending the 1 st grade elementary school level, have taken a screening test that measures pragmatic language ability PLA, namely the Arabic version of the TOPL-2 in a period of 40 minutes for each. Results and conclusions: Descriptives, frequencies and graphs' statistical analyses were performed to test the difference between the preschoolers and non-preschoolers' achievement in pragmatic using the Arabic test of pragmatic language A-TOPL. The means and standard deviations of the two groups were very close to one another (M: 9.53, SD: 2.29 and M: 8.20, SD: 2.40). Also, the highest percentage in both the preschoolers' and non-preschoolers' groups was under the average's category (73.33 for the former and 93.33 for the latter) with only two cases under the superior category and two under above average in the preschoolers' group and four cases under the below average category in the counterpart group. Besides, a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between PLD and EChE. There was a negative correlation between the two variables, r= 0-.610, n=15, and p= 0.016. A scatter-plot summarizing this result approved also a zero relationship between the two variables. Overall, there was a negative correlation between PLD and EChE. Enrollment in preschool education does neither affect nor is related to PLD.