Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: The effect of home literacy factors on English and Spanish linguistic proficiency and pre-literacy skills for Spanish-speaking children

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Literacy development is one of the most important components of a child's education.Both oral language skills and pre-literacy skills are strong predictors of young children's future reading ability. The child's home experiences are considered the foundation for the development of these skills. The purpose of this postdoctoral research and training project is to determine a relationship between home literacy factors and the development of language and literacy skills in young low income Hispanic children, during two major transitional periods. These transitions include moving from home into a preschool program followed by moving from preschool into a kindergarten classroom. The sample will be divided into clusters based on English and Spanish proficiency levels, determined at the beginning of pre-k. Pre-literacy skills will be assessed for the entire sample at the beginning and end of pre-k as well as once during kindergarten. Home visits to collect information on home literacy factors will occur for a subset of the sample during three time points. Analyses will be conducted to test the hypotheses that home literacy factors shape language proficiency, jointly influencing pre-literacy skills between and across languages. Additionally, changes in home literacy practices during transition will be investigated.