Emergent literacy in children of immigrants coming from a primarily oral literacy culture

Abstract

This study examined emergent literacy skills of 61 kindergarten children whose families had immigrated to Israel from a primarily oral society (Ethiopia). Three complementary perspectives were examined: developmental patterns, individual differences, and the contribution of parent literacy. The emergent literacy skills of children whose families were from Ethiopia were compared to those of 52 children coming from a primarily literate culture. The groups had acquired less complex Hebrew literacy skills in the same order, including phonological awareness, letter naming and consonant writing. However, the Ethiopian Israeli children were less proficient on various aspects of Hebrew language proficiency, and less familiar with aspects of cultural and environmental literacy. Most were also unable to speak or comprehend Amharic. In both groups, phonological awareness explained individual differences in letter naming, but vocabulary and syntactic knowledge added to the explained variance only in the Ethiopian Israeli group. Letter naming was associated with consonant writing in both groups. Hebrew oral and written language proficiency of Ethiopian Israeli mothers was positively correlated with literacy skills in their children. The results underscore the importance of distinguishing between less complex, modularized, aspects of emergent literacy and more complex literacy skills. Here the cumulative effects of poverty, oral home culture, parental inability to mediate language and literacy, and non-optimal conditions for becoming bilingual place young immigrant children at risk for academic failure early on.

Home language and literacy practices among immigrant second-language learners

“…However, in one study in Israel (Shany et al 2010), kindergarten pupils from Ethiopian-background low-SES families, who engaged in very few home oral-language or literacy activities, still scored just as well as non-Ethiopian children from the same neighborhood on letter knowledge and basic spelling in Hebrew (their L2). Careful scrutiny of the studies reveals that these findings may not be as contradictory as they seem.…”

“…Some studies did not find a relationship between parental proficiency and child proficiency (Driessen et al 2002; Schwartz et al 2009), whereas others (e.g. Shany et al 2010) did find that parents’ L2 proficiency positively influenced the children's L2 literacy skills. The only study in which the mothers’ L2 vocabulary was measured directly identified a positive relationship between immigrant mothers’ overall L2 English skills and their children's English vocabulary (Quiroz et al 2010).…”

“…The mothers also became less involved in children's literacy activities; this could be partly explained by their cultural belief that the teacher was entirely responsible for the child's formal schooling. Amharic-speaking Ethiopian Jews emigrated mainly from small farming communities to Israel during the civil war and famine; most of them have low levels of education and were not literate in Amharic; subsequently, they have had a difficult time finding employment in Israel and most remain in a low SES position (Shany, Geva & Melech-Feder 2010). By contrast, two comparative studies in Canada – one quantitative study (Riches & Curdt-Christiansen 2010) and one qualitative (Simmons & Johnston 2007) – suggested that Asian Indian and Chinese parents held cultural beliefs that required parental involvement in school-like literacy activities.…”

“…Careful scrutiny of the studies reveals that these findings may not be as contradictory as they seem. Immigrant children may be able to learn the basics of literacy from school with minimum help from their parents at home (Shany et al 2010). As they move on to more complex literacy knowledge and skills, more exposure, practice, and guided help at home are likely to give them an edge (Reese et al 2000; López et al 2007; Farver et al 2013).…”

“…The only study in which the mothers’ L2 vocabulary was measured directly identified a positive relationship between immigrant mothers’ overall L2 English skills and their children's English vocabulary (Quiroz et al 2010). Second, the four studies were conducted with children at different ages of different ethnic groups in different countries: primary students in the Netherlands (Driessen et al 2002), seven-year old Russian children in Israel (Schwartz et al 2009), Ethiopian kindergarten pupils in Israel (Shany et al 2010), and Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the US (Quiroz et al 2010). Moreover, although the majority of the participants were of low- or medium-to-low SES (except for those studied by Driessen et al 2002), the criteria for SES classifications might be different, making it hard to compare participants across studies.…”