Home Literacy Activities and Their Influenceon Early Literacy Skills

MARY ANN EVANS, DEBORAH SHAW, and MICHELLE BELL, University ofGuelph

Abstract The relationship between the home environmentsof 66 children and their language and literacy developmentwas examined. After accounting for child age, parenteducation, and child ability as indexed by scores on a rapidautomatized naming task and Block Design of the WPPSI-R,shared book reading at home made no contribution to theprediction of the literacy skills of letter name and lettersound knowledge in kindergarten. In contrast, homeactivities involving letters predicted modest and statisticallysignificant amounts of variance. For the areas of receptivevocabulary and phonological sensitivity, neither sharedbook reading nor letter activities were predictive. Follow-upto mid-Grade 2 underscored the importance of lettername/sound knowledge and phonological sensitivity inkindergarten in accounting for individual differences in laterachievement in reading comprehension, phonologicalspelling, and conventional spelling.

Parents and the literacy environments they create in theirhomes are widely believed to play an important role in thedevelopment of children's reading and language skills.Evidence to support this belief has often focused on the timethat parents spend reading to their children. As examples,Scarborough, Dobrich, and Hager (1991) found that pre-schoolers who were read to more and who participated inmore solitary book activities at home became better readersby Grade 2 compared to preschoolers with less frequentearly literacy home experiences. DeBaryshe (1993) observedthat mothers who began reading to their children at anearlier age had children with greater receptive languageabilities. Moreover, Senechal and Cornell (1993) showedthat but a single storybook reading session appears to besufficient to increase 4- and 5-year-old children's receptivevocabulary. Intervention studies have lent further supportto the purported benefits of shared storybook reading. Forexample, in a study by Swinson (1985), parents who wereencouraged to read daily to their nursery school childrenover a nine-month period had children whose vocabularyscores improved during the project, whereas the scores of

children whose parents had not been encouraged to read tothem daily were not significantly enhanced.

Through a meta-analysis, Bus, van IJzendoorn, andPellegrini (1995) concluded that approximately 8% of thevariance in reading achievement was explained by the timeparents spent reading to their preschoolers. However, itsinfluence is weaker than previously thought, and theadequacy of simply examining the frequency of storybookreading at home has been questioned (Scarborough &Dobrich, 1994). For example, Scarborough et al. (1991) andDale, Crain-Thoreson, and Robinson (1995) have suggestedthat child interest or other child factors may influence thefrequency of home literacy activities. Further, parent-childreading has also been reported to be a weaker predictor ofreading achievement than general demographic variablessuch as socio-economic status, which are often not takeninto account (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994).

Given the modest correlations found, and the questionsthat have been raised regarding reading to children, parentslistening to their children read or explicitly coaching theirchildren in reading subskills may be more importantmechanisms by which parents influence their children'sreading achievement. Hewison and Tizard (1980) andHannon (1987) found that mothers who reported that theyregularly listened to their children read had children withsignificantly higher scores on reading achievement testscompared to those mothers who did not. Experimentalsupport for these findings comes from the Haringey Project(Tizard, Schofield, & Hewison, 1982) which found that 6-year-old children of parents who were encouraged to listento their children read during a two-year intervention, madegreater gains in reading achievement than children whoreceived extra teacher help or no help at all; these gains weremaintained three years later (Hewison, 1988). However, itshould be noted that the Haringey Project is not withoutcriticisms, and that other similar studies have failed toreplicate its findings (e.g., Plewis, Mooney, & Creeser,1990).

Other candidates for enhancing children's literacy are theavailability and types of literacy-related materials in the

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2000, 54:2, 65-75

66 Evans, Shaw, and Bell

home, which vary substantially (Purcell-Gates, 1996; Teale,1986). Weinberger (1996) and Mason (1980) noted thatvisiting the library, reading signs, watching educationaltelevision programs such as "Sesame Street," and having alibrary membership are related to subsequent reading skill.However, the amount of unique variance predicted by theseaspects of the home literacy environment may be very small.In fact, Griffin and Morrison (1997) found that the presenceof reading materials (i.e., newspapers, magazines, children'sbooks), frequency of library use, parent reading, sharedstorybook reading, and behaviour that competes withliteracy-related behaviour (i.e., television viewing) incombination predicted only 1.2% of the variance in chil-dren's literacy skills in kindergarten and Grade 2, afterremoving the variance attributable to child cognitive ability,maternal education, age, and preschool experience.

Finally, families may differ in the extent to which parentsencourage literacy activities and provide their children withmaterials that focus on learning letter names, forms, andsounds. Few studies have collected information on thisaspect of parental behaviour. However, it has been observedthat a high percentage of precocious readers had parentswho explicitly taught their children the names and soundsof letters (Durkin, 1966; Jackson, Donaldson, & Cleland,1988). In a recent Canadian study, Senechal, LeFevre,Thomas, and Daley (1998) observed that, on average,middle- and upper-middle class parents reported teachingtheir kindergarten and Grade 1 children to print and readwords "sometimes" to "often" each week, and that thissignificantly predicted reading skill in kindergarten andGrade 1; storybook exposure made no contribution. Incontrast, Elliott and Hewison (1994) found that a compositeof the presence of books, newspapers, and magazines in thehome and the frequency of parents' reading predicted 11%of the variance in reading success in children 3 to 11 years ofage, but home educational activities such as rhyming,identifying and sounding letters, and writing failed to besignificant predictors. However, this latter study can becriticized for only informally assessing reading performanceby using the highest level of book read by the child duringa home observation session, and an informal rating of thechild's reading ability by his or her class teacher. Mostcritically, the ages of the children spanned a broad range,from 3 to 11 years, which may have masked the effects ofhome educational activities more relevant for beginningreaders, such as rhyming, letter identification, and writingopportunities.

In summary, previous research suggests that literacy-related activities at home influence children's readingachievement through the development of vocabulary, lettername knowledge, and early print concepts (eg., spacing,direction of print). However, existing research into thesehome literacy activities has frequently failed to take childindividual differences into consideration, or has failed to

partial out socio-economic status, or has not used standard-ized measures of reading achievement when attempting todetermine how home activities influence children's readingskill acquisition. Without these controls, the contribution ofspecific home literacy activities cannot be assessed.

In addition, few studies (see Senechal et al., 1998 for anexception) have examined the differential influence of homeliteracy activities on different aspects of emergent literacy.Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) have conceptualized theseareas as "outside-in" and "inside-out" processes. The formerincludes semantic, syntactic, conceptual, and schemaknowledge, as well as knowledge about the conventions ofprint, and might reasonably be encouraged through readingto children. The latter includes knowledge of letter namesand sounds specific to a given alphabetic script, as well asphonological awareness, which are likely fostered bydifferent and more focused experiences with letters (Murray,Stahl, & Ivey, 1996). However, there is little researchaddressing home experiences which might foster phonologi-cal sensitivity. Moreover, given the developmental progres-sion among preschool and kindergarten children fromawareness of syllables to onset-rimes to phonemes (Fox &Routh, 1975; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter,1974; Treiman, 1992) and the relationship between chil-dren's phonological sensitivity and language ability (Chancy,1992; Smith & Tager-Flushberg, 1982; Wagner, Torgesen,Laughton, Simmons, & Rashotte, 1993), it may be arguedthat in this age group, phonological sensitivity is as much an"outside-in" or language skill, as an "inside-out" one.

The purpose of this study was threefold: 1) to determinethe interrelationship between the general literacy environ-ment of the home, the activity of reading to children, andcoaching children in reading; 2) to determine the contribu-tion of these activities to children's knowledge of letternames and letter sounds, their receptive vocabulary, andphonological sensitivity after accounting for child cognitiveability and parental education; and 3) to determine theextent to which these "inside-out" and "outside-in" skillsmeasured in kindergarten predict reading comprehensionand spelling in Grades 1 and 2.

MethodPARTICIPANTS

Eighteen schools, 17 public and 1 private, within and arounda small urban community in Southwestern Ontario wererecruited to assist with a longitudinal family study ofbeginning reading. Family participation was gained viainformation letters sent home with senior kindergartenchildren by the classroom teachers. From these letters, 78children (along with the parent of each child who felt thatshe/he spent the most time reading with his/her child)returned consent forms. These represented approximately23% of those to whom letters were given. Two familiesmoved out of the region, three withdrew due to personal

Home Literacy Activities and Early Literacy Skills 67

TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics for Child Variables

Standardized Scores

'This includes one child who was absent for the grade one testing.

Raw Scores

Grade

Kindergartenn - 66

Grade 1n - 63

Grade 2n - 64"

Test

Block Design (WPPSI-R)RAN ColoursPPVT-RTOPA-KLetter NamesLetter SoundsPassage ComprehensionPhonological SpellingPassage ComprehensionWRAT Spelling

M10.29

107.92103.61

99.79

100.8698.94

SD

2.42

16.5311.01

11.44

11.9311.45

M24.1460.0576.8214.4642.3915.1812.9040.3622.7321.78

SD5.26

15.5316.814.35

11.167.748.26

10.278.263.13

circumstances, and one child was diagnosed as developmen-tally delayed, leaving a pool of 72 children. Recordingfailures during family interviews resulted in losing part ofthe data for nine other participants. For four families justone or two data points were missing, and mean values fromthe other participants were substituted for these missingscores. Thus 67 children, 62 mothers and 5 fathers formedthe data pool.

The children were in 23 different classes from neighbour-hoods which varied in socio-economic status and spannedrural and urban locales. Demographic information collectedfrom the families indicated that family incomes ranged fromless than $16,000 to over $100,000, with the mode fallingbetween $40,001 and $55,000. As a reference point for thissample, the average family household income in Ontario is$54,000 (Statistics Canada, 1996). The average child age inthis sample was 5 years, 11 months (SD = 3.77 months;range - 5:5 to 6:8) in May of their kindergarten year.English was the first language for all but one child, and thepreferred language for all children according to parentalreport. Parent age ranged from 28 to 46 years (M= 40.37,SD - 4.37). The majority of parents had completed at leastGrade 12 or 13 of high school (89% of fathers and 98% ofmothers) and two-thirds of the mothers had obtainedfurther education a college diploma (30%), universitydegree (37%) or post-graduate degree(3%). Many fathers hadalso obtained a college diploma (41%) or university degree(10% undergraduate and 10% post-graduate). As a referencepoint for these demographics, 20% of males over 25 and 17%of females over 25 in Ontario have completed university(Statistics Canada, 1996). Thus the mothers, but not thefathers, in this sample were somewhat more highly educatedthan the norm.

INSTRUMENTS

Initial demographic questionnaire. This set of questions dealtwith family composition and income, parents' education,languages spoken, general home environment (including

number of books in the home, subscriptions to magazinesand newspapers, print resources in the home), and anyspecial needs that parents noted in their child.

Literacy practices questionnaire. This tape-recorded interviewwas a combination of both closed- and open-ended ques-tions. Specific questions asked how much time in a weekparents managed to find to read together with their child;age of their child when they first began to read to him/her;age of their child when they began to read to him/her on aregular basis; who else read to the child; and who typicallyinitiated book reading episodes. In addition, parents wereasked whether there were any other activities that theyprovided their child with that are related to reading, or anyother activities they had provided their child with earlierthat were related to reading. By asking the questions in thisway, it was hoped that social desirability would be reducedand that only parents who made a point of engaging theirchildren in other activities related to reading would volun-teer answers. Transcription and coding revealed that, withrespect to these two questions, a substantial number ofparents volunteered that they had made a point of involvingtheir children in activities teaching letter names and formsduring the preschool years and/or in the kindergarten year.Their responses to these two questions were combined toform a score from 0 to 2 to differentiate families in theiremphasis on letter activities in the home, with 0 represent-ing no mention of activities, and 2 representing letteractivities both before and during the kindergarten year.Some parents also volunteered other activities (e.g., educa-tional games, books on tape) but not in enough numbers tobe used for statistical analysis.

Children's hook title checklist. This checklist was taken fromSenechal et al. (1996) and consisted of a list of 36 titles ofchildren's books and 20 foils. Respondents were asked toindicate which items were indeed the titles of real children'sbooks as opposed to fictitious titles. Each parent's resulting

68 Evans, Shaw, and Bell

TABLE 2Descriptive Statistics for Home Literacy Variables

Parent years of education'Hours read to child per weekChild's age when first readb

Child's age at regular reading'Who initiates reading11

Letter activities before/during K.Book titles checklist scoreChild report of home instructionChild report of frequency of bookreadingChild report of frequency of libraryvisits

M

4.183.603.062.682.131.00

15.910.86

1.60

0.86

SD

.962.111.481.491.04.50

5.840.90

0.58

0.72

Range

2 - 61.0-10.5

1-71-61-40-2

4-320-2

0 - 2

0 -2

"Education level was coded as 1 elementary, 2 - grade 10, 3 - highschool, 4 - post secondary college or diploma degree,5 undergraduate degree, 6 - post graduate degree.bAge when first read to was coded as 1 newborn, 2 1 to 6 months,3 7 to 11 months, 4 1 year, 5 2 years, 6 3 years, 7 4 years.'Age when regularly read to was coded as 1 under 1 year, 2 1 year,3 - 2 years, 4 3 years, 5 4 years, 6 - 5 years.''Who initiates reading was coded as 1 - child, 2 - parent, 3 - parentand child, 4- routine.

score was the total number of correct hits minus the numberof incorrect nominations or false alarms. These scores act asa proxy measure of the frequency of reading children'sbooks which is not subject to a social desirability responsebias.

Child interview on parental coaching practices. Children wereinterviewed regarding the frequency of shared storybookreading at home, frequency of library visits, and how theirparents helped them read. Responses for the child being readto at home were coded 0 points for no response or anunclear response; 1 point for a report of being read to alittle; and 2 points for a report of being read to a lot.Responses for the child using a library outside of his/herschool were coded 0 points for no response or an unclearresponse; 1 point for using the library a little; and 2 pointsfor using the library a lot. Finally, how the children saidtheir parents helped them learn to read was coded 0 pointsfor no response or an unclear response; 1 point for context-based strategies such as looking at the pictures; and 2 pointsfor phonological decoding strategies that are more independ-ent of context.

Cognitive measures as control variables. These included twomeasures The Block Design subtest of the WechslerPreschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence - Revised(WPPSI-R; Wechsler, 1989) and a rapid automatized namingtask.

The Block Design subtest requires children to reproducedesigns using flat two-coloured tiles and is a measure of non-verbal reasoning and concept formation, visual perceptual

organization and g, or general intelligence (Sattler, 1992).For children ages 5 and 6 years, split-half reliability isbetween .79 and .86. Correlations with the Full Scale IQ onthe WPPSI-R are between .60 and .70.

The rapid automatized naming (RAN) task was presentedon a large white card, with five coloured stickers (red, green,blue, yellow, and black) at the top of the card. Underneathwere five lines of 10 stickers with the five colours repeatedrandomly. The children were asked the colour of the initialfive stickers and then timed on how long it took them toname the colour of the stickers on the remaining lines, whenasked to name them as quickly as possible. Rapid automa-tized naming time is negatively correlated with later readingskill (Wolf, Bailey, & Morris, 1986) and reflects the rapiditywith which linguistic labels for serially presented visualstimuli can be retrieved and articulated. Test-retest reliabilityover nine months within our sample was .78.

Phonological and language measures. These consisted of theTest of Phonological Awareness - Kindergarten Version orTOPA-K (Torgesen & Bryant, 1994) and Peabody PictureVocabulary Test - Revised or PPUT-R (Dunn & Dunn, 1981).

The TOPA-K is a paper and pencil task that requires thechildren to listen to a pictured target word and pick whichof three other pictured choices begins with the same soundas the target word. In the second part, they select which offour words starts with a different sound from the otherthree. Test-retest reliability is reported in the manual to be.94 and concurrent validity coefficients with other measuresof phonological processing range from .47 to .66 (Torgesen& Bryant, 1994).

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised was usedto measure the children's receptive vocabulary. It requireschildren to chose which of four pictures best represents theword spoken by the examiner. Split-half reliability for thisage group is between .74 and .84 and the concurrent validitycoefficient with other vocabulary measures is .71 (Dunn &Dunn, 1981).

Letter knowledge. This was assessed with two tasks. Lettername knowledge was assessed by presenting the childrenwith two cards, one in upper-case and one in lower-case fontwith the 26 letters of the alphabet randomly ordered.Children were asked to name the letters for a maximumscore of 52. In this sample, the correlation of scores forupper-case and lower-case letters was .89. The card display-ing lower-case letters was presented later in the battery andthe children were asked to provide the sounds for any lettersthat they knew for a maximum score of 26. Split-halfreliability in our sample was .96.

Literacy skill. In Grades 1 and 2, the children's literacy skillswere assessed with the Word Identification, Word Attack,and Passage Comprehension subtests of the Woodcock

Home Literacy Activities and Early Literacy Skills 69

TABLE 3Partial Inter-correlations of Home Variables (Age Partialled Out)

11. Parent education 2. Hours read/week3. Child age - first read4. Child age - read regularly5. Initiator of reading6. Letter activities7. Book title checklist8. Child report book reading freq.9. Child report library freq.10. Child report of home instruction

2 3 4

-.18 -.14 -.10- -.01 -.20

- .59***

5

.29*

.12-.28*-.23

6

.15

.15-.18-.02-.02

7

.40***-.10-.24*-.25*

.10

.06

8

.09

.17

.07-.04

.08

.03

.07

9

.00-.01-.06-.11-.04-.17

.01-.09

10.18

-.29*-.07-.08-.00

.07

.05

.02

.15

*p < .05; **/> < .01; ***p < .001.

Reading Mastery Tests - Revised (Woodcock, 1987). Thesesubtests were highly intercorrelated in our sample, and onlythe scores from the Passage Comprehension Test were usedin the present analysis. This test required children to read abrief passage with a blank substituted for a deleted word,and to provide a word that best filled that blank. Split-halfreliability as published in the test manual is .94.

Spelling in Grade 1 was assessed through a phonologicalspelling test designed by Mann (1993). The test was adaptedby having pictures for each of 14 dictated words, besidewhich the child printed the word. Words were scored alonga scale from 1 to 4 according to the number of phonologicalelements represented. A score of 0 was given if no letterswere printed or if no letter captured a phonological elementof the spoken word, and 4 was given if the word was spelledin the conventional fashion.

Spelling in Grade 2 was assessed with the spelling subtestof the Wide Range Achievement Test-3 (Wilkinson, 1993).Each word was dictated, then said in a sentence, then spokenagain for the child to print. In the manual, internal consis-tency for 8-year-olds is reported at .83 and correlations withother standardized spelling tests range from .76 to .84.

PROCEDUREParents were initially interviewed by telephone in Januaryof the kindergarten year to collect demographic informationand general information about the home environment.Approximately four months later a home visit was con-ducted in which the parent was observed reading withher/his child and interviewed about specific literacy prac-tices. These home visits were repeated each year. At the endof kindergarten, parents were mailed the children's booktitles checklist.

Children were individually assessed at school at approxi-mately nine month intervals: May of the kindergarten year;February of Grade 1; and December of Grade 2. Thekindergarten assessment consisted of a battery of testsincluding the two cognitive, two language, and two lettertasks, and the child interview regarding home literacy

experiences. In Grades 1 and 2, the Word Attack, WordRecognition, and Passage Comprehension subtests andspelling tests were administered within a wider batterywhich, in Grade 1, included the RAN task to assess nine-month test-retest reliability.

From all of the above assessments, raw scores were usedin the analyses with age partialled out. In all analyses, alphawas set at .05.

ResultsDescriptive statistics for the sample on the home literacyvariables and child variables are displayed in Tables 1 and 2.One child obtained a standard score more than two standarddeviations below the normative mean on the Block Designand Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised, and thatcase was removed from the data base, leaving 66 children. Bythe end of Grade 1, a further two children were withdrawnfor a one-to-one remedial program, Reading Recovery, andthese cases were likewise removed from the database for theanalyses of the Grades 1 and 2 data. Despite these adjust-ments, the mean standard scores derived from the publishedtest norms fell between 99 and 104, suggesting that thesample was in general neither slightly ahead nor slightlybehind in print-related skill development.

Responses to the various questions about the literacyenvironment indicated that on average, parents reportedspending three to four hours a week reading with theirchild. For 12% of families this was a regular family routine.More often it was initiated by the child (30%) or the parent(29%). Parents most often reported first reading to theirchildren when the children were between 6 months and 1year of age, and regularly reading to their children when thechildren were between 1 and 2 years old.

INTER-CORRELATION OF HOME ENVIRONMENT VARIABLESTable 3 presents the inter-correlation matrix for thosevariables reflecting demographics and literacy practices.Because parents might be more concerned about literacyskills in older children or, conversely, in children who were

70 Evans, Shaw, and Bell

TABLE 4Inter-correlation of Child Variables

2

1. Block Design -.062. RAN 3. PPVT-R

4. TOPA-K

5. Letter Sounds6. Letter Names7. Passage Comprehension 18. Phonological Spelling9. Passage Comprehension 210. Spelling11. Age

3 4 5

.31** .39*** .19**-.07 -.19 -.27*- .40*** .23

- .69***_

6

.17-.27*

.17

.59***

.80***_

7 8 9

.34* .21 .29*-.30* -.17 -.37*

.21 .33* .15

.62* * .68* * .64*

.74* * .74* * .65*

.70* * .74* * .66*- .70* * .80*

- .67*

10 11

.17 .25-.39*** -.11-.01 .32**

.41* .09

.50* .13

.50* .09

.70* .22

.60* .17

.75* .01- .02

*p < .05; **p < .01; *** p < .001.

born later in the the calendar year and thus entered seniorkindergarten when just 4 years of age, child age waspartialled out in this correlation matrix. The table showsthat higher accuracy on the children's book titles checklistwas associated with an earlier age of both first reading to,and regularly reading to the child. This would be expectedas reading to one's child at an earlier age should promotemore exposure to and knowledge of children's books.Accuracy was also related to higher parent education, whichwas associated with child book reading being a regularfamily routine. However, accuracy was not correlated withparent or child reports of the frequency of parent-child bookreading, or to any parent or child report variables reflectingparental coaching of reading.

INTER-CORRELATION OF COGNITIVE, LANGUAGE, AND

LITERACY VARIABLES

Table 4 presents a correlation matrix between the variousliteracy, language, and cognitive measures, with age at firsttesting partialled out. All measures of print-related skillswere highly correlated (r .50 - .80) and phonologicalsensitivity and receptive vocabulary were moderatelycorrelated (r = .40). However, phonological sensitivity wasmore highly correlated with letter name and letter soundknowledge (r - .69 and .59). Block Design scores wereuncorrelated with RAN scores, and only the former werecorrelated with both phonological sensitivity and receptivevocabulary. Finally, Block Design and PPVT-R scores weremodestly correlated (r - .31).

PREDICTION OF KINDERGARTEN PRINT-RELATED ANDLANGUAGE SKILLS FROM HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENTFixed-order hierarchical regression analyses were conductedto determine the relative contribution of the home literacyenvironment to early reading and language developmentafter controlling for parent education and child ability.Predictor variables were selected according to three criteria:previous research had pointed to the importance of thevariable in children's achievement; a sensible pattern of

correlations had emerged in the intercorrelations of Table 3,or other reasons had suggested that the variable was reliable;and a reasonable distribution of scores had been obtained forthe variable to allow it to be appropriate for regressionanalyses.

According to these criteria, six variables were selected:child age, participating parent's education level, childcognitive ability (RAN and Block Design scores), book titleschecklist score, and home letter activities. Previous researchhas suggested that home reading instruction, child-parentbook reading, and participating parent's education levelinfluence academic achievement (e.g., Bus, van IJzendoorn,& Pellegrini, 1995; Horta?su, 1995; Martini, 1995; Meyer,Wardrop, Hastings, & Linn, 1993; Share, Jorm, Maclean, &Matthews, 1984). The Block Design subtest of the WPPSI-Rand RAN task have been reported to be correlated withreading ability in young children (e.g., Blachman, 1984;Bowers, & Swanson, 1991; Wolf, Bally, & Morris, 1986).These variables were entered in steps in the order listedabove, with raw scores on letter name knowledge, lettersound knowledge, receptive vocabulary, and phonologicalsensitivity as the outcome variables.

Zero-order correlations between predictor and outcomevariables are shown in Table 5, and results from the regres-sions are shown in Table 6. All of the final regressions weresignificant. As shown in Table 6, after accounting for childage and parent's education, child cognitive ability was asignificant predictor of all variables except receptive vocabu-lary, accounting for between 9 and 15% of the variance (seeTable 4). Child age and parent's education level, whichaccounted for 29% of the variance in receptive vocabularyscores, made little contribution to the other scores.

Shared reading, as indexed by the titles checklist score,made no contribution to any of the outcome variables afteraccounting for age, parent's education level, and cognitiveability. Letter activities, however, further predicted 9, 10,and 5% of the variance in letter sound, letter name, andphonological sensitivity, respectively. Supplementaryregressions were run in which the order of the parent

Home Literacy Activities and Early Literacy Skills 71

TABLESZero-Order Correlations Between Home and Child Cognitive Variables and Language/Literacy Variables

Letter SoundsLetter NamesTOPA-K

PPVT-R

Passage Comprehension 1Phonological SpellingPassage Comprehension 2Conventional Spelling

Parent Ed

.15

.07

.19

.39***

.17

.18

.10

.05

Block D.

.19

.17

.38**

.31**

.34**

.21

.30**

.17

RAN

-.27*.27*

-.19-.07-.30**-.17-.37**-.39***

Letter Activities

.36**

.36*

.24

.04

.36**

.19

.30*

.25*

Titles Score

.20

.27*

.17

.21

.10

.14

.20

.19

*p < .05; **/> < .01; *** p < .001.

education and the titles checklist variables were inter-changed. Even when the titles checklist score was enteredimmediately after age, it resulted in an R2 change of just .04when predicting receptive vocabulary and letter soundknowledge, .02 when predicting letter names, and .03 whenpredicting phonological sensitivity; only the first of thesereached statistical significance.

PREDICTION OF GRADE ONE AND GRADE TWO LITERACY

SCORES

Table 7 displays stepwise regressions in which readingcomprehension and spelling skill in Grades 1 and 2 werepredicted from the kindergarten variables after enteringchild age and parent's education level. Because vocabularyknowledge has been shown to correlate with readingcomprehension (see Levy & Hinchley, 1990; Stanovich,1986), it was added to the set of predictor variables in theseregressions. Finally, given the high correlation (.80) betweenletter sounds and letter name knowledge, scores on thesetwo variables were standardized, and the mean of these twoscores was used as the last step of the regression.

Scores for the Block Design and the RAN, enteredtogether as the third step, predicted between 16 and 23% ofthe variance in reading comprehension scores at both gradelevels, and conventional spelling scores in Grade 2. Theyalso accounted for 6% of the individual variation in phono-logical spelling scores in Grade 1, but this failed to reachstatistical significance. While receptive vocabulary, enteredfourth, made no significant contribution in any of theregressions, phonological sensitivity in kindergarten, enterednext, did so in all four regressions. Finally, the compositeletter sound/letter name knowledge scores, which wereentered last, predicted about 19% of the variance in theGrade 1 literacy scores, and continued to predict significantbut smaller amounts of variance in Grade 2.

DiscussionThe main goal of the present study was to identify whichtypes of literacy-related activities chosen by parents influ-ence children's skill acquisition during the beginning stagesof reading. The results of this study suggest that in a sample

of this type, young children's early literacy and oral lan-guage skills letter name knowledge, letter sound knowl-edge, phonological sensitivity, and receptive vocabulary are not enhanced or developed via general reading activitiesat home. While the frequency of being read to, as indexedby the children's book titles checklist, was correlated withchildren's vocabulary scores, age of first being read to, andage of being regularly read to, it did not predict any of thefour kindergarten literacy measures after controlling for age,parent education, and child ability (rapid automatizednaming speed and visual perception/non-verbal reasoning).In contrast, parental report of the frequency of homeactivities that entailed letters, such as learning letter namesand sounds and printing letters, predicted knowledge ofletter names, letter sounds, and phonological sensitivity aftercontrolling for child age, parent education, and child ability.As in the data collected by Senechal et al. (1998), theemphasis on these two types of literacy activities, i.e., bookreading and letter activities, were unrelated in the homes inthe present sample. While parents with higher children'sbook titles scores (reflecting more shared reading) weremore highly educated and made book reading more of aroutine, they were not more likely to actively coach theirchildren's knowledge of letters.

The relationships observed between these two types ofhome activities and the print-related and language skillsassessed in kindergarten are in accord with the proposalWhitehurst and Lonigan (1998) have made, that "inside out"and "outside-in" components are influenced differentially bydifferent experiences. They suggested that the latter, whichincludes vocabulary development and emergent conceptsabout print, is enhanced by book reading to children; theformer, which includes letter name and sound knowledge,phonological awareness, and inventive. spelling, requiresactivities and materials focusing on letter-sound information.Whitehurst et al. (1994) found that the frequency of bookreading at home influenced children's vocabulary develop-ment, while teaching alphabet knowledge in the child'sdaycare setting influenced reading and writing. Similarly,Senechal et al. (1998) found that storybook exposurepredicted an additional 2% of the variance in children's oral

72 Evans, Shaw, and Bell

TABLE 6Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Children's Print-related and Language Skills in Kindergarten

Letter Sounds

Predictors

l.Age2. Parent education3. Block Design/RAN4. Titles score5. Letter activitiesFinal Adjusted R2

Final F(df)

AR2

.02

.03

.09

.01

.09

3.

Pnsns

.05ns

.01.17

.12 (6,59) p