PARENTAL SUPPORT: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT OF KINDERGARTEN EMERGENT

READERS

A Basic Research Proposal

Teacher I

Teacher I
. INTRODUCTION
In his study of language learning, Teal (1982) views literacy as the product of

parents’ involvement and support to children’s fondness in reading activity. Emergent

Literacy is based on study of young children acquires knowledge about language before

attending formal school. The concept of emergent literacy imply that parents should

prepare their child for formal school on reading and writing. A home with rich literacy

instruction helps leaners to build prior knowledge to acquired new learning skills taught

at school. In addition, the significance of creating a conducive learning that influence the

literacy development of an emergent reader such as perceptual factors, oral language

factors, cognitive factors, affective factors, and home environment factors is a must to

be able to develop the love for reading.

Moreover, The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reports

the reading proficiency of the 79 participating countries of 15-year-old students in 2018.

The Philippines participating boys and girls both ranked the lowest in reading among

PISA-participating countries. As PISA point out, reading proficiency is essential for a

wide variety of human activities. The state joined the international program to monitor

the quality of education that the Philippines serves in basic education. The Department

of Education vows to improve the quality of education after PISA revealed its results. In

Science and Mathematics, the Philippines placed as the second lowest among

countries.

In this view, the Philippines Informal Reading (PHIL-IRI) aims to measure the

student’s reading performance using classroom-based assessment tool. It helps

teachers, and the organization to design, provide appropriate reading strategies,

methods, and materials to improve development in literacy and reading. The

assessment tool is conducted to Grades 4-6 in Filipino and English. Comprehension is

one of the most problem Philippine schools. Interventions and innovations are

implemented, still, the reading performance is still a problem.

Hence, finding the root of the problem and suggesting the solutions can improve

the reading performance of students in basic education. In which, emergent readers,

ages 2-7 years old should be exposed in literacy development at home and at school

(Teal, 1982). Providing their needs and enhancing their skills are the key factors to

successfully develop reading skills and love for reading.

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This part presents the relevant literature and studies focusing on the literacy

development of the emergent readers. Specifically, this review of related literature and

studies highlight the following: (a) Emergent Readers, (b) Literacy development and (c)

parent’s support/involvement.

The term "emergent" denotes the developmental process of literacy acquisition

and recognizes numerous forms of early literacy behavior.

Clay (1966) describes emergent readers to the first stage in a child’s growth

toward literacy, particularly, this stage relates to the beginning experiences or the child’s

first experiences with print in the home and continues through early years of formal

schooling.
 Secondly, Harris and Hodges (1981), refer to this period of acquiring the specific

skills and activities that allow reading to take place as preparedness or reading

readiness. The child’s preparedness allows him/her to cope with a learning task. This is

significantly determined by a complex pattern of intellectual, motivational, maturational

and experiential factors. Further, reading readiness is viewed as a set of social,

emotional, physical and cognitive competencies.

Moreover, The age of emergent readers generally ranges from 2 to 7 years old.

They begin to familiarize themselves with the concepts of print related to directionality,

one-to-one correspondence between the spoken and written word, and the value of

picture clues to the meaning of a story. They also develop an understanding that the

printed word carries the main meaning of a story. They begin to make text-to-world

connections and may be able to extend on what is written on the page.

The term “emergent reading” is derived from “emergent literacy” and is used to

advocate that the development of reading starts early in a child’s life instead of school

years. The emergent literacy includes both reading and writing components. The

concept “emergent reading” emphasizes the developmental continuum aspect in

learning to read, rather than an all-or-none phenomenon that begins only when a child

starts school, suggesting there is a boundary between reading and pre-reading.

As Teal (1966), describes the characteristics of emergent readers, a child should

acquire considerable information about writing before they enter formal instruction. They

have learned to write naturally because (Gundlach, et.al., 1985) familiar writing

situations and real-life writing experiences are evident in the home environment as

modeled by the parents and even by other family members. Their emergent writing is
characterized by playful markings to communicate something, which signals their

knowledge of the uses of written language before learning the form. This develops

through constant invention and reinvention of the forms of written language (Dyson,

1986; Parekr, 1983) which signal the simultaneous reconstruction of their knowledge

about written language. Bissex (1980) and Read (1975) described writing as self-

initiated and self-directed or voluntary, by observing more skilled others and by

participating in literacy events, by exploring and learned writing through interaction with

literature others.

Based on the literature, the main components of emergent reading include

vocabulary knowledge, decontextualized language skills, conventions of print,

knowledge of letters, linguistic awareness, and phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

Vocabulary knowledge is important in emergent reading. Reading requires

decoding of visual inputs into meaning. In the earliest stages, a child decodes a word

letter by letter, links each letter into its corresponding sound, and combines all the letter-

sounds to a single word. For example, in the beginning, a child decodes a word “cat” by

sounding out /k/ … /æ/ … /t/. The next stage is to extract the meaning of the word,

which is important since it motivates the child. If a child knows individual letters but does

not know the meaning, he/she is unlikely enjoying the reading process since the child

has no semantic representation through which a child decodes the phonological

information.

Decontextualized language skills refer to the language used in story narratives

and other written forms of communications to convey novel information to readers.

Conventions of print in English include the left-to-right and top-to-bottom direction of

print, the sequence in which the print progresses from front to back across pages, the

difference between pictures and print on a page, and the meaning of elements of

punctuation. Knowing these conventions helps a child learn to read. Decontextualized

language skills in children are related to conventional reading skills including decoding,

understanding story narratives, and print production.

Knowledge of letters is critical to learning the sounds associated with the letters.

However, only teaching letter names may only increase surface letter knowledge and

may not improve the abilities to learn to read. Linguistic awareness involves the ability

to take language as a cognitive object and to understand how language is constructed

and to use language as a way of communication. Linguistic awareness develops over

time, and a child may be aware of some rules (e.g., that words are formed from

phonemes) without being aware of other rules (e.g., two words rhyme). Many studies

have suggested that children good at detecting syllables and rhymes are better readers.

Linguistic awareness involves the ability to take language as a cognitive object

and to possess information about the syntax. Most research on linguistic awareness has

focused on phonological skills (e.g., phoneme isolation, phoneme deletion, etc.). The

relation appears to be reciprocal. Better phonological skills led to quicker learning to

read, while learning to read improves phonological skills.

Phoneme-grapheme correspondence represents the links between phonemes

and alphabet letters. A child requires to understand both how individual letter sounds

and how combined letters sound. This ability has been related to higher levels of

reading achievement.
 Children learn these main components of emergent reading before formal

schooling. These components are the building blocks that a child needs to learn to read.

Becoming a fluent reader requires all these components, which can be divided into two

interdependent sets of skills and processes. They are the process of decoding and

comprehension. The process of decoding needs children’s knowledge of rules for

translating letters to sounds and sounds to words, while the process of comprehension

needs children to find meanings for the words. Both are essential processes for reading.

Difficulties in either process can lead to reading impairments.

The following factors that influence the development of an emergent reader are

based on Raymond Morrow’s my Change thoery, Lev Vygotsky’s Cognitive

development, Emile Durkheim functionalist theory and Jean Piaget’s cognitive

development theory.

Factors that Influence the Development of An Emergent Reader

Perceptual factors Oral factors Cognitive factors Affective factors Home Environment

factors

 Developed  Has a great  Conscious  Shows strong  Has access to

sensory skills and deal of oral understanding involvement in print materials

visual and auditory language about language being read to  Has parents who

discrimination  Has well-  Has merging  Has a great are habitual

 Left to right eye developed ability to think deal of time and readers

progression aural/oral  Uses trial and interest in themselves

 Stimulated language skills error to discover reading  Has social

awareness and  Uses new things  Enjoys reading interaction with

manipulation of descriptive  Expanding aloud parents and

 objects/toys language memory  Can retell peers

 Emulates adult  Imaginative or stories actively  Has pleasant

reading behavior creative environment for

reading.

Morrow, 1989 ; Vygotsky, 1986 ; Durkin, 1975 ; Piaget, 1969

Literacy development. Literacy development is the process of learning words,

sounds, and language. The acquisition of early literacy skills begins in a child’s first

year, when infants begin to discriminate, encode, and manipulate the sound structures

of language, an ability called phonological awareness.

As the earliest stage of literacy development, emergent literacy is the first

moment that a child begins to understand letters and words. While many of the

behaviors of the emergent literacy stage are not fully formed and irregular, these are still

some of the first signs that a child is beginning to form literacy ability.

Literacy development refers to the process of learning words, sounds and

language. Literacy skills are developed from early childhood and enable children to

learn how to read, write, speak and listen with confidence, allowing them to

communicate and gain a better understanding of the world.

Parent’s support/involvement. Parental involvement is participation by parents in any

school-related activity in school as well as the home. These activities are not limited to

merely the traditional categories, such as attendance at school events, home tutoring,

teacher-parents conferences, discipline management, and participation on school

committees. This participation is seen by educators as supportive of instruction, which

mayor may not influence school policies (Epstein, 1984, 1995; Epstein and Salinas,
1993; Moles, 1987; Ost, 1988). In this research study parental involvement is

incorporated into two categories: 1) Parental involvement in school activities, and 2)

parental involvement in learning activities in the home.

In her study of impact of parental involvement, Stutzel (2019) she reveals that

early literacy skills are known as foundational skills, which are critical for a child to have

in order to be proficient in reading throughout their educational career. It has been

critically important to determine how educators can best help students learn these early

literacy skills, but the involvement of parents is also very important as well.

Based on the study conducted by Nurul Fatonah, it concludes that the parents’

engagement is very influenced by the parent’s jobs. It is related to the available

learning time with the children. The worker parents have little learning time with the

children, furthermore, the parents feel that they already fully helped by enrolling the

children to pre-school. Some of the participants who has job believes in the teachers

to teach their children, and feel that educating the children is the teachers’

responsibility.

Support and Involvement of parents in their child’s early literacy and

development are very essential. As a parent, families should be aware of the

importance of developing these skills at their very young age. In addition, parents and

community can be a big partner of school when it comes to promoting early literacy

skills within the home on a regular basis. This ensures that the child has the best

opportunity to be successful throughout his or her educational career.

III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research will be focus on the parents’ support in the literacy development of
Emergent Readers in School, it aims to answer the following question:
 What is the level of support do parents provide for emergent readers?

1.1 Perceptual Factors

1.2 Oral Language Factors
1.3 Cognitive Factors
1.4 Affective Factors
1.5 Home Environment Factors

Hypothesis

The hypothesis raised in the research are:

1. There is no significant difference on the level of support emergent readers

receive on literacy development according to parents’ educational attainment.
2. There is no significant difference on the level of support emergent readers
receive on literacy development according to socio- economic status.
3. There is no significant difference on the level of support emergent readers
receive on literacy development according to family members.

IV. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

Problem. This study is limited only to exploring the parent’s support in the literacy

development of Emergent readers.

Instrumentation. Instrument used to measure the level of parent’s support in this study

is the 16-item survey questionnaire.

Locale. The research took place at WESCOM Elementary School, Puerto Princesa

City.

Population. The participants involved in this study are the parents from two

Kindergarten sections.
METHODOLOGY

A. Design
The study will use the quantitative descriptive research to determine the level of

support provide by the parents for emergent readers in terms of perceptual factors, oral

language factors, cognitive factors, affective factors, and home environment factors.

The results of the study will serve as an in-depth analysis of significant difference on the

level of support provide by the parents on emergent readers’ literacy development.

B. Sampling

The researchers will conduct the study to fifty (50) parents of Kindergarten

learners in Wescom Elementary School in Puerto Princesa City District II.

C. Data Collection

The researchers will be conducting the survey in January 2023. Prior to the

administration, the researchers will provide letter of permission to conduct the study to

the school principal. The dissemination of the survey will be via Pen and Paper.
 The researchers will made use of Pen and Paper as a tool in gathering data such

as respondents’ personal information and perception.

D. Ethical Issues

Gathering information will be limit to the minimum extent of collection of

responses to achieve the research objectives. The data gathered will be under the strict

confidentiality and shall be use only for the specifically declared research aims.

E. Data Analysis

The response will be analyzed through frequency, weighted mean and Kruskal-Wallis

Test. The Frequency will use to organize and summarize the data of the respondents

when it comes to parents’ household members, socio-economic status, and educational

attainment. Means or Weighted Mean will be use on determine the level of support

received by kindergarten emergent reader on perceptual factors, oral language factors,

cognitive factors, affective factors, and home environment factors. Kruskal-Wallis Test

will use in the study to find out if there will be a significant difference on the level of

support provide by the parents in Wescom Elementary School on the Literacy

Development of Kindergarten Emergent Readers.