Early Literacy Difficulties Among Hispanic Students With...

Early Literacy Difficulties among Hispanic Students with Low Social Economic Status Ignacio Romero Central Washington University Developmental Challenge Paper The challenge that many students face upon entering first grade in a low social-economic status area is low literacy skills. The students represented in this developmental paper come from low income families whose parents were poorly educated, many illiterate. As a result, students would rarely read to at home, either due to the lack of literature in the home or the parents were non-readers and unable to read to or read with their child. Relevant Theorist The first theory with an impact on this developmental literacy challenge is B.F. Skinner’s first theory†¦show more content†¦Children at age two have a vocabulary that reaches up to 2,000 words, by the age of four, preschool age children of parents who are literate have increased their vocabulary to a maximum of 10,000 words. This would be difficult to accomplish in a household where both parents are illiterate, especially when it comes to more rich vocabulary words. Lastly, it is important to include Norm Chomsky every time we talk about language acquisition. Through his studies we can say that children can learn a new language because of their innate ability in their brain to be able to classify different words, specifically grammatical terms. He suggested that we have a device in our brain which he called a Language Acquisition Device that allows children to notice the differences between two languages. In my opinion if all of us have this device. All the child needs to stimulate it to be able to learn those important first words that a child is going to need as they further exposed into a language. Resource Senechal (1996) study show that students’ achievement level in reading improved when they had early exposure to storybook and early literacy in the home (Senechal, 1996). This study examined whether storybook, reading and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills, provided by parents in the home would enhance the language skills and