The Development of Emergent Literacy Skills during Preschool Period: A Sample of 36-71 Month-Old Turkish Children

Abstract

The aim of this study was to unfold the development of preschool children’s emergent literacy skills with respect to age. This study was conducted in a cross sectional design. The sample consisted of 96 children aged 36-71 months. ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis Test results indicated that emergent literacy skills (phonological awareness, print concepts, alphabet knowledge and name writing) of preschool children could be differentiated with respect to age. The best performance that children displayed in phonological awareness was in syllable segmentation, whereas the lowest performance was in last phoneme detection. In terms of print concepts, the children were better at items about book concepts than at items about sentence, words and letters. With respect to alphabet knowledge, 36-47 month-olds showed almost no letter knowledge but the performance increased after 48 months of age.  In terms of name writing, 36-47 month-olds responded with drawing rather than writing their names. 48-59 month-olds began to use letters in their name writing and most of the 60-71 month-olds could write their names conventionally.