Book-Reading Practices at Home and the Development of Phonological Awareness Skills in the First Grade

Abstract

Children's phonological awareness and literacy development are enhanced by book-reading activities. However, it is unclear how these book-reading practices relate to the development of phonological awareness skills among first graders in the Zambian context. The study aimed to investigate the association between book-reading activities at home and first graders' phonological awareness, specifically blending and end-sound discrimination. A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 79 children (mean age of 96.47 months; SD = 15.26) were randomly sampled from 14 low-resource public primary schools in Lusaka Province. The Basic Skills Assessment Tool (BASAT) was used to evaluate the children’s phonological awareness skills whilst the Family Literacy questionnaire was used to gather information on the child’s reading practices at home. Since the data collected were non-parametric, Spearman Rank Correlation was used to evaluate the association between book-reading practices at home and the phonological awareness skills of first graders. The findings suggest that blending was associated with child engagement in reading short stories, and parents reading picture books to the child had a significant association with children’s end-sound discrimination. These results suggest that reading practices in the home are very important as they support the development of phonological awareness skills. The study recommends that parents should continue to engage in reading activities with their children.