Linguistic awareness in the kindergarten
Date
1981
Authors
LaRocque, Linda Joan
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was three-fold: (1) to investigate the nature of kindergarten children's cognitive confusion about the functional and featural concepts of literacy; (2) to investigate the relationship between the development of the functional and featural concepts of literacy; and (3) to observe in what ways and to what extent the development of linguistic awareness is encouraged and supported by the kindergarten environment.
Thirty-five kindergarten children participated in the study. The data were collected by means of three instruments: the Test of Linguistic Awareness in Reading Readiness (Ayers, Downing, & Schaefer, 1977), an interview schedule, and a classroom observation schedule. The Test of Linguistic Awareness provided a measure of each child's level of linguistic awareness, which was used to divide the children into three groups. In addition, the incorrect responses were analyzed so that inferences about the nature of the children's cognitive confusion could be made. The individual interviews provided information about how the children thought about the nature, purposes, and technical language of literacy. The classroom observation schedule was used to record the kinds and frequency of literacy-related activities which occur in the kindergarten environment.
Several general conclusions were drawn from the data:
(1) the ability of the kindergarten children in the study to recognize literacy behaviors, to understand the purposes of literacy, and to use the technical language of literacy and the nature of their cognitive confusion concerning these literacy concepts was related both to their overall level of linguistic awareness and to the type of question being asked;
(2) in general, the children understood the functional concepts of written language better than they understood the featural; however, the development of the basic functional concepts seemed to facilitate the development of the basic featural concepts, which in turn seemed to facilitate the development of more complex functional concepts, and so on;
(3) the pattern of development of the functional and featural concepts was essentially the same for the three groups, even though the groups differed with respect to both the degree of development of the concepts and to the nature of the cognitive confusion about the concepts;
(4) the kindergarten environment did support and encourage the development of linguistic awareness, and was similar in many ways to home environments which have been found to stimulate preschool interest in written language; and
(5) there were indications that the kinds of literacy related activities kindergarten children engaged in and the frequency with which they engaged in these activities were related to level of linguistic awareness.
Several implications of the findings for instructional practice and for future research were discussed.