Page No. 49-58
Prahbhjot Malhi, Bhavneet Bharti and Manjit Sidhu
PGIMR, Chandigarh, MCM DAV College, Chandihgarh
This paper examined the impact of home literacy environment on the reading skills of
young school going Indian children from Chandigarh, a city in North India. A total of 119
school children (in the age range of 5 to 10 years) studying in Classes 1 to 3 from one
government and one private English medium school were recruited and their reading
skills were assessed using the reading fluency test from the Woodcock Johnson III
Achievement battery. Home literacy was evaluated by a Home Literacy Environment
Questionnaire, which was administered on the parents. The questionnaire assessed
the availability of printed materials at home. The home literacy activities were used
in the construction of a Home Literacy Environment (HLE) index score with higher
HLE scores indicating more literacy stimulation at home. The literacy environment of
children was extremely poor. Majority of the families did not have a library card (90%);
did not subscribe to a magazine (77%); had never read to their child (65%); and had
no children’s books at home (55%). Step wise multiple regression analysis identified
two significant predictors viz. age of the child, b = -.64, t(109) = 8.94, p < .001 and
total home literacy environment score, b = 1.01, t(109) = 2.80, p < .01. Together, age of
the child and total home literacy environment scores explained a significant proportion
of variance in reading discrepancy score, R2 = .45, F(2, 109) = 45.15, p < .001. The
study underscores the need to implement early family literacy programs to enable young
children to achieve long term academic success.