Investigating early relationships between language and emergent literacy in three and four year old children

Research has documented the importance of early oral language and phonological sensitivity abilities in relation to later reading success. More research is needed to measure specific components of oral language abilities in order to better understand oral language development during the preschool years and its relation to emergent literacy. The present study was designed to expand the research base on language production and emergent writing and drawing abilities in 3-year-old children. This investigation utilized standardized language assessment and a spontaneous language sample in order to provide an in depth analysis of oral language. Spontaneous language samples were analyzed for length of utterance, vocabulary diversity, and lexical components. Emergent writing and drawing were evaluated utilizing a developmental scale. This investigation also sought to document developmental changes in spontaneous language production in a story retell task. In addition, a subgroup of these children was re-evaluated at 4 years in order to determine whether language and emergent writing and drawing at 3 years predict language and emergent literacy abilities at 4 years. The methods for the proposed study are presented for data collection, transcription, coding, and analysis of language, emergent literacy and emergent writing measures. Results indicated that standardized measures of both receptive and expressive language were related to spontaneous language variables at 3 years. On the story retell task, children were able to retell parts of a story about a familiar routine at 3 years and provided significantly more information in their story retell at 4 years. Both standardized language and spontaneous language measured at 3 years were significant predictors of oral language abilities at 4 years. Although standardized language was a better predictor of oral language, the lexical composite uniquely contributed to the prediction of oral language abilities at 4 years. The predictor variables were not significantly related to phonological awareness and print awareness measured at 4 years. Due to the strength of the concurrent and predictive relationships found in this study, future research should continue to explore relationships between early language abilities and later academic outcomes.