The impact of home literacy environment on kindergarten children’s second language learning

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between kindergartners’ second language skills and home literacy environment. 71 children with Norwegian as their second language participated in the study (mean age 5.2 years; 33 girls and 38 boys). We investigated second language skills with a set of language tests and assessed the home literacy environment by use of a questionnaire to the parents. The results showed close relationships between second language vocabulary, narrative and phoneme awareness skills. We found large variation in how much time parents devoted to shared book reading and how many children’s books they had at home. In half of the homes, parents read aloud in both languages. This correlated positively with the child’s second language skills. Parental education level was significantly related to the number of children’s books in the first language and to time devoted to shared book reading. The children’s age, but not gender, was related to second language skills. Taken together, our results show that shared book reading at home was related to phoneme awareness skills; however, kindergarten attendance was the strongest predictor of the children’s second language skills.