An exploratory study of three to five year olds’ responses on the Bader Reading and Language Inventory to determine developmental stages of emerging literacy

Abstract

A range of literacy, language, and symbol concepts was explored with 74three-to five-year-old children to learn whether a developmental basis to literacy could be identified. Several tasks from the Bader Reading and Language Inventory were grouped under the following categories: concepts about books and print, alphabetic knowledge, left-to-right print orientation, precursors of encoding, syntactic/semantic processing, and reading behaviors. Children were divided into four age groups for the purpose of identifying developmental preliteracy stages. Findings indicated that these 3- to 5-year-old children handled books properly and exhibited adequate oral-language facility. Generally, the emergence of observable specific preliteracy behaviors did not occur until age four. Variation in literacy, language, and symbol concepts is to be expected among 5- and 6-year-old children, dependent on their experience and rate of development.

Key Words:

• Emerging literacy
• young children
• developmental
• assessment

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Verna Hildebrand

The authors wish to acknowledge support from Michigan State University through an All University Research Initiation grant, and the cooperation of teachers, parents, and children of the MSU Child Development Laboratories; the Lansing, Michigan, Main Street Child Care Center; and the Office of Research and Evaluation Services of the Lansing School District.