Environmental influences on early language and literacy development: Social policy and educational implications

Abstract

A growing body of literature suggests strong associations between environmental factors and young children's early language and literacy development. In the United States, large socio-economic differences are evident in children's skills when they enter Kindergarten, differences that persist through schooling and can be explained by children's early communicative environments. Here, I highlight three themes that characterize the features of children's communicative environments that are found to promote language learning: (1) Talking with children helps more than talking to children, (2) Linguistic input should increase in diversity and complexity during early childhood, and (3) A gradual transition from contextualized to decontextualized conversations is helpful. There are many reasons for the large variability in early communicative environments within and across social class groups. Two primary reasons include parents' knowledge of child development and parenting stress. Social policies that reduce parenting stress and increase parental knowledge have the potential to improve early language environments and lead to better educational outcomes for all children.

Keywords: Early environment; Intervention; Language development; Literacy; Parent communication; Parenting; Parenting knowledge; Parenting stress; Social policy.