Die Bedeutung der familiären Lernumwelt für Vorläufer schriftsprachlicher Kompetenzen im Vorschulalter

Abstract

The acquisition of reading competencies as a significant cultural skill in our society is initiated early on and supported by a child's interaction with its social surroundings. The family, as probably the most important agent of socialization, decisively affects children and their competencies. However, which forms of activities are meaningful for the development of precursors to reading, known as emergent literacy, has rarely been investigated in Germany yet. Therefore, the present paper explores the importance of different facets of the home learning environment on children's emergent literacy, using data of 554 children, age 3 to 4 years, from the longitudinal study BiKS-3-10. Three dimensions of the home learning environment are distinguished: quality of interaction, formal instruction in literacy, and exposure to books. Through path modeling the associations between these dimensions of the home learning environment were analyzed, controlling for children's level of competencies at the beginning of the study and family background variables (socioeconomic status and parental native language), and emergent literacy (vocabulary, grammar, content knowledge, knowledge of letters). Results show that specific dimensions of the home learning environment are associated with specific facets of emergent literacy. The findings are discussed with regard to theoretical and practical implications.