Early Literacy Exposure

Reading and writing skills are essential for an individual to function throughout daily life. We learn these skills once entering the realm of schooling. Once a child enters school they begin the process of learning literacy to help the communicate with peers, family and other individuals. Moreover, early exposure to these skills seems beneficial to a child before they enter school. As in, a child being shown these skills prior to them seeing it once entering school. Furthermore, these “programs” could provide any exposure that is said to be helpful for a child success in literacy skills. Previous research has been done on the effects of early exposure using these “programs”. Most of the studies conclude that the skills benefit a child, only

An analysis has been done on how a child is exposed to these early literacy skills. A video called, “Learning to Read and Write Doesn’t Start in Kindergarten or First Grade”, states the facts on how early literacy exposure plays a role in a child life. It is interesting to see the fact that early exposure happens prior to any programs being implemented. Songs, books, and other forms of media have been exposed to us since a very young age. Zero to Three, states that these help a child prior to them enter school and the effects of parental intervention. . Zero to Three, also states that parents play a crucial role in the development of literacy skills. Parental intervention is highly needed to help with early literacy exposure because, they are the child’s main support system. Moreover, emphasizes on these skills as early as birth can lead a child in a successful direction in school. Furthermore, the same aspects have applied to Dorothy Strickland’s testimony on early literacy. She goes into detail that parents play a vital role in the early literacy exposure. She also talks about how the early literacy intervention needs to be improved upon before a child enters school. She stresses that more programs need to be added for children to gain this exposure if no support is given to them. Altogether, support is needed for the exposure of literacy to be impactful

A study has been done coinciding with web-based programs in the early literacy exposure stage. The study promoted the idea that web-based programs could help early literacy skills, and Schmitt et. al stated, “Education practitioners and policy-makers are enthusiastic about web-based games’ potential to promote reading and pre-reading skills, although it is unclear how effective these games are, especially for children in early childhood.” Once that “unclear” feeling was established, the researchers produced the study to see how effective they were. The results did indicate that, those in the intervention group did show a better improvement on literacy skills than those whom were not in that group. Similarly, we can see this in a study conducting early print exposure. This is the only study I could find that analyzes early exposure of literacy skills through a child life through adulthood. Moreover, the focus of the study was to see how print exposure early on provides a child with literacy skills to make them become successful in literacy when entering adulthood. The result indicated children who are more proficient in comprehension and technical reading and spelling skills read more sufficiently; because of more print exposure early on, their comprehension and technical reading and spelling skills improved more with each year of education. (Mol & Bus).