Complex oral language skills are an important predictor of literacy, according to the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP).¹

This was among the findings of a report on effective early literacy instruction released earlier this year by the nine-member panel of experts that originally convened in 2002.

"The charge to the panel was to examine the scientifically- based research literature on early literacy and find out what will ensure that children become successful readers when they go to school," explained Laura Westberg, MS, principal investigator of the report.

The panel began by identifying and defining the early literacy skills that related to later reading. "That had never been defined before," said Westberg, director of Special Projects and Research at the National Center for Family Literacy in Louisville, KY. "We had to look for all the correlational research that measured an early literacy skill before kindergarten and look at that measurement in relation to a measurement of a conventional literacy skill in kindergarten or after."

"Usually, a panel will decide that a particular instructional approach should be examined and then find all of the studies of that approach," explained NELP chair Timothy Shanahan, PhD, professor of urban education and director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "This panel found all the instructional studies, categorized them into sets, and examined the sets."

The panel could determine what skills belonged to the domain of early literacy by identifying the research that met the criteria and showed a positive relationship. Eleven related language variables were identified. (See boxes .) The panel further divided the research into five categories to determine the effect of each type of intervention on the early literacy skills of young children:

• code-focused interventions,

• shared reading interventions,

• parent and home programs,

• preschool and kindergarten programs,

• language enhancement programs.

"There were more and better studies on some of these topics than on others, but generally there were successful practices in all categories," Dr. Shanahan told ADVANCE.

The research indicated that code-focused interventions had the most impact on overall literacy. "This category had a broad impact on early literacy and conventional literacy skills, while the other interventions had less impact on other outcomes," Westberg said. For example, shared reading interventions impacted only oral language and print awareness, and parent and home programs impacted only oral language and cognitive ability. Code-focused interventions measured more skills than the other types of interventions.

The panel members also sought to determine the effectiveness of age-appropriate interventions. "There are strong beliefs in the field that 4-year-olds should be taught differently than 5-year-olds," Dr. Shanahan said. "The research data provide little support for this idea, though more direct tests of age differences in new studies may be more supportive of such claims."

One problem is that there are many studies of 5-year-olds, but fewer of 4-year-olds and still fewer of 3-year-olds, he said. "We need more research on younger kids. The panel did find some differences among children in terms of developmental level, but age was not the big determiner of these differences. The key for the teacher seems to be not to respond to the kids' ages but what they're able to do."

The lack of research in younger populations (ages 0-3) was an overall limitation. The only two categories that had significant research involving young children were the parent and home and oral language interventions. While the research on parent and home interventions did not yield enough information for a statistically significant finding, findings on oral language interventions showed a greater effect among young children.

"There were enough studies where we could say the sooner we can start intervening on language with young children, the better it is for them," Westberg said. "It was really a nice finding."

The effectiveness of oral language interventions was a surprise to many of the panel members. Initially, correlational research analyses showed a weak relationship between these interventions and later reading skills. However, a methodologist on the panel, Chris Schatschneider, PhD, of Florida State University, suggested breaking down the elements of oral language into more discrete skills instead of looking at oral language elements such as vocabulary, grammar and listening comprehension together. "It was very revealing how some of the more foundational language skills have a weaker relationship and some of the more sophisticated or complex language skills have a stronger relationship with later reading," Westberg said.

"Researchers and practitioners have long believed that language development is a great predictor of later reading comprehension. We were surprised not to find this relationship to be that important," Dr. Shanahan said. "However, when we looked more deeply at the issue, some measures did much better than others. Teachers and parents should focus on language development, but this focus should do more than just get students to memorize words."

Focusing on improving a child's score on a vocabulary performance measure will not have the larger influence on later literacy development that instruction in listening comprehension, vocabulary definition and understanding likely would have in improving overall reading comprehension.

Despite stringent research standards and careful analysis, the report by the panel has limitations, some of which are inherent in the study design, he acknowledged. "A meta-analysis is a study of studies. Its findings are dependent on the quality of those studies. The more and better the original work, the better the resulting meta-analysis."

Research quality was a major issue, Westberg noted. Of the thousands of studies considered by the panel, approximately 300 correlational studies and 200 intervention studies met its research criteria.

Hopefully, the report findings will inspire more high-quality research in the field of early childhood education, she said. "We need to do better research, particularly in terms of being much more rigorous and having higher quality research designs. That is one of the key limitations of this report and the field in general."

More true experimental designs are needed rather than basic pre- and post-intervention reports. For example, many of the studies failed to include the equivalency of treatment and control groups at the outset. More research in younger populations also is needed, Westberg stressed. "It was disappointing that we didn't have as many studies for much younger children as we would have liked."

However, the limitations have little effect on the validity of the report findings, Dr. Shanahan believes. "The major findings would likely hold up, but the analyses that try to make sense of with whom and under what conditions these work might have some problems. More direct tests of those questions might end up with differences."

The most immediate effects of the report likely will appear in the research and policy fields of early childhood literacy, he noted. "This is the most extensive review of early literacy teaching, and research can use it to determine what to study next."

With funding from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) has developed a teaching guide for educators designed to explain the findings and how to apply them in daily treatment and education. NCFL also plans to produce parent posters promoting and explaining the findings along with Web-based instructional videos to accompany the teacher guide.

Westberg plans to implement a more direct education approach to inform parents of the significance of the report findings and how they can play a role in literacy development. Her organization, which frequently deals with parents who may not have the literacy skills to read booklets and brochures, plans to train employees to discuss the importance of the findings with families.

"Kids in these early intervention programs need so much more to ensure that they're going to be successful." Successful implementation of the findings could benefit children from low-income families who may not get the kind of early literacy instruction necessary for later success, she said. "We need to make sure they are getting experiences that are proven to work and will set them on the path to being good readers and learning what they need to learn to succeed in life."

Reference

1. National Institute for Literacy. (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Accessed online at www.nifl.gov.

Resource

• National Center for Family Literacy. (2009). What Works: An Introductory Teacher Guide for Early Language and Emergent Literacy Instruction. Accessed online at www.famlit.org/pdf/what-works.pdf.

For More Information

• National Center for Family Literacy, online: www.famlit.org

• National Institute for Literacy, online: www.nifl.gov

Language Areas Related to Later Literacy Skills

• Alphabet knowledge

• Phonological awareness

• Rapid automatic naming of letters/digits

• Rapid automatic naming of objects/colors

• Writing or writing name

• Phonological memory

-National Institute for Literacy

Language Areas with Moderate Correlation to Later Literacy

• Concepts about print

• Print knowledge

• Reading readiness

• Oral language

• Visual processing

-National Institute for Literacy