The structure of home literacy environment and its relation to emergent English literacy skills in the multilingual context of Singapore

Abstract

Prior to formal instruction, children gain experiences within the home environment that contribute to their school readiness. The home literacy environment (HLE) has garnered much interest as an established contributor to child language and literacy development and academic achievement. While models of HLE are mostly produced from Western cultures, there is little known about how they apply to multilingual Asian cultures. This study aims to examine if these models are universal and can be applied to a multi-cultural and multilingual context of Singapore. From a population representative sample of kindergartens, 1327 children and parent participants were recruited, and provided parent-report data on their HLE and child performance on outcome measures of vocabulary, phonological sensitivity and reading and spelling. Fourteen items were included in the HLE questionnaire, while standardized measures of child outcomes included the Bilingual Language Assessment Battery (BLAB), Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing 2nd Edition (CTOPP-2), and the Wide Range Abilities Test (WRAT-4). Latent structural analysis revealed a four-factor model of HLE that included shared reading, child interest, parent habit and parent involvement factors. Results from correlational and path analyses revealed that the shared reading factor, which included frequency of reading to the child and child asking to be read to, had the strongest relation to both language and literacy, and significantly predicted vocabulary and reading outcomes. Literacy outcomes were more specifically predicted by the child interest factor. These findings highlight the overlap and differences in theoretical models of these home-outcome links across cultural contexts.