Links Among Home Literacy Environment, Literacy Interest, and Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschoolers At Risk for Reading Difficulties

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that children who are interested in literacy activities and voluntarily engage in them are likely to become better readers than children with less literacy interest. Literacy interest, along with engaging literacy activities and responsive teaching, are important components in children’s early literacy experiences. This study examines associations among children’s self-reported literacy interest, their parents’ reports of home literacy environment (HLE), and their code-related skills. Overall, literacy interest was related to code-related skills (i.e., letter–word identification and alphabet knowledge). HLE was not related to code-related skills. Further analyses reveal different patterns of relations among interest and code-related skills for children with low receptive language scores compared to their peers with age-level receptive language scores. These results suggest that taking advantage of individual children’s interests as well as planning activities that are likely to be interesting may be effective strategies for promoting children’s learning of important school readiness skills.