Development of the language proficiency of five- to seven-year-olds in rural areas

Abstract

Rural children are a largely understudied population in language and literacy research, despite the fact that these children often enter school with delays in their language development. Since most rural areas suffered from so-called selective rural outmigration, many parents in rural areas are lower or middle educated. The home literacy climate, however, depends not only on the educational level of parents, but also on their lifestyle. In this study, we examined whether parental educational level and literacy use -as a feature of parental lifestylepredict the language skills of children in Grade 1 in Northeast Netherlands. Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that the effect of parental literacy use on code-related skills is only significant in K-1 and K-2. In Grade 1, however, literacy use had a modest effect on oral language skills. The findings stress the importance of parents' literacy use for informational purposes. ARTICLE HISTORY

The Role of Mother’s Education and Early Skills in Language and Literacy Learning Opportunities

“…In addition, based on the questionnaire, the results showed that the duration of language learning for learners whose mothers are highly educated is longer than that of learners with mothers with lower levels of education. Based on the theory, learners have the opportunity to learn language both in the family and at school for an average of 85 minutes per day (Poolman et al, 2017;Reilly et al, 2020). This skills gap must be overcome by the pre-school literacy program, which must be able to equip parents on how to train their children in language skills and early literacy in their home environment (Krahe et al, 2021;Lane et al, 2014).…”

“…Of course, this can help better prepare children for school. Stakeholders must include children who have mothers with lower levels of education into the equalization program for language and literacy learning (Poolman et al, 2017;Reilly et al, 2020).…”

“…Early skills are early childhood language and literacy skills that are acquired naturally in the family. These early language and literacy skills include the ability to recognize the alphabet, phonological abilities, and early childhood oral language skills (Neumann et al, 2013;Poolman et al, 2017). Alphabet knowledge includes names and pronunciations, phonological abilities include the ability to pronounce letters and words, while oral language skills are children's vocabulary knowledge.…”