The Impact of Reading on Children’s Cognitive and Language Development

Abstract

Literature has always been regarded as one of the best methods available that can positively influence the development of young preschool and kindergarten children, but also older school kids. However, in order for it to make a significant impact, we need to make sure that the content that is being read is appropriate for the age of the children we are reading to. If young children are exposed to adult literature or such that they cannot understand at their language level, it does not help their language improvement and development. In order for literature to make a full impact on both language and cognitive development, we need to use appropriate materials to reach satisfying results, in this case, genres which have been specifically crafted for the language level of the targeted audience. The aim of this paper was to explore the impact of reading to children (specifically literature designed for their language level) by doing a replication study based on the paper done by Fekonja et al. (2007), analyse the results and compare the two classes on a language measurement scale in order to see the impact of literature on language development. The results showed a significant difference in language development between the two groups, favouring the experimental group, which reinforces the importance of incorporating systematic reading of children’s literature into educational practices.