During the last years, researchers have discovered that the development of literacy begins at birth. Nowadays, a lot of emphasis is given on the child's development of pre-reading and pre-writing skills in the preschool period. By enrolling the child into kindergarten, parents become an important link in cooperating with the teacher. Together, they play an important part when it comes to the child's literacy development.
My paper is divided into the theoretical and the empirical part. In the theoretical part, I have defined the following concepts: literacy, family literacy, early literacy, rising literacy, initial literacy, and transitional literacy. In addition, I have researched how linguistics is defined in the curriculum of Slovene, Croatian, and Finnish kindergartens. In the empirical part, I have collected data on quantitative research by using descriptive and causal methods. I have used the checklist to check the child's understanding of the concept of the print and the book by M. Barone, M. Mallette in S. Hong Xu (2005). For my research, I have tested 47 children: 25 boys and 22 girls from two kindergartens in central Slovenia.
My research shows that children achieve higher results when tested for the second time than they do at the first testing. The results from the first and the second testing show that planning more linguistic activities in kindergarten is important for the development of the child's understanding of the concepts of the print and the book. The research also shows that gender does not affect the important statistical difference when it comes to the understanding of the concepts of the print and the book.
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