With a little help: improving kindergarten children’s vocabulary by enhancing the home literacy environment

Abstract

Early linguistic competencies are necessary prerequisites for later reading and writing abilities and thus for a successful school career. Various child and family characteristics have been identified as important predictors of children’s linguistic abilities, such as intelligence or the “home literacy environment” (HLE). Therefore, one way to improve children’s competencies is by enhancing the HLE they live in. Family literacy programs have proven to be successful with this task. However, most interventions used to improve HLE were fairly intensive and costly. In this study a nonintensive intervention procedure was developed to improve both, HLE and linguistic competencies. The sample consi..