Early Childhood Exposure To Literacy Skills As Better Predictor Of Reading Achievement: A Longitudinal Study From Ghana

This paper examined the correlation between early exposure to literacy skills in the homes at the Kindergarten level and later reading and phonological awareness at Primary One and Primary Two in Ghana. Young Children from educated home backgrounds exposed to alphabet knowledge, word recognition, nursery rhymes and lexical restructuring by their parents in the homes performed significantly higher in reading measures and phonological awareness than their counterparts from semi-educated and non-educated backgrounds at the Primary level. Using Pearson correlation with significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), this longitudinal study showed the synergy between early home background/economic/and parental educational status and later reading achievement of Ghanaian young children from the Kindergarten to the Primary level. These patterns of early disparities in childhood have the potential of carrying over into primary education and beyond that can affect the academic achievement as revealed by the findings of this longitudinal study. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p37