Abstract
ABSTRACT The quality of a child’s early language and communication environment (ELCE) is an important predictor of later educational outcomes. However, less is known about the routes via which these early experiences influence the skills that support academic achievement. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (n = 7,120) we investigated relations between ELCE (<2 years), literacy and social adjustment at school entry (5 years), structural language development and social development in mid-primary school (7–9 years), and literacy outcomes (reading and writing) at the end of primary school (11 years) using structural equation modelling. ELCE was a significant, direct predictor of social adjustment and literacy skills at school entry and of linguistic and social competence at 7–9 years. ELCE did not directly explain variance in literacy outcomes at the end of primary school, instead the influence was exerted via indirect paths through literacy and social adjustment aged 5, and, language development and social development at 7–9 years. Linguistic and social skills were both predictors of literacy skills at the end of primary school. Findings are discussed with reference to their potential implications for the timing and targets of interventions designed to improve literacy outcomes.
Highlights
Children’s early oral language skills are positively associated with later academic out comes (Bleses et al, 2016; Roulstone et al, 2011)
A richer early language and communication environ ment (ELCE) was associated with more favourable school readiness in literacy and social adjustment, language devel opment and social development, and performance IQ and decoding skills in the middle years of primary school
This was the case for literacy at school entry and social develop ment in middle-primary school years (β = .004, 95% CI: .002, .004). These findings reveal that a richer ELCE is associated with better literacy skills at school entry, which in turn are associated with better language development and social development in the middle years of primary school, which in turn are associated with better literacy outcomes at the end of primary school
Summary
Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) Ethics and Law Committee and the Local Research Ethics Committees. This was based on three measures: play skills, prosociality and pragmatic language, which were combined to generate a latent variable (as described in the statistical analyses section). These were summed to create a score out of 10 for words and the same for non-words with higher scores indicating better reading ability These two scores were combined to generate a latent variable for decoding skills (as described in the statistical analyses section). There were six latent variables in the SEM; ELCE (mother-child direct teaching, motherchild activities, child’s interactions with others, resources, and other activities), literacy at school entry (reading and writing), language development in mid-primary school (expres sive and receptive language), social development in mid-primary school (play skills, prosociality, and pragmatic language), decoding skills (word reading and non-word read ing), and end of primary school literacy outcomes (reading and writing). For the SEM, the full information maximum likelihood method was used to deal with missing data
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