engleski

The role of socioeconomic status in the narrative abilities of preschool children acquiring Croatian

First graders enter school equipped with a number of language skills needed for the acquisition of literacy. Therefore, it is important to explore factors that promote language development in preschool children. Studies on language development outline socioeconomic factors (SES) as one of them (Alt et al., 2016). Much of the work on SES and language performance has focused on very young children with the sole emphasis on standardised testing. In this research we have examined how parents’ level of education and family income relate to narrative abilities and more general language abilities which are relevant for future literacy skills. 40 preschool (6 years) monolingual children were tested with two standardised language tests (PPVT-HR - Dunn, Dunn, Kovačević et al., 2010 ; TROG-HR - Bishop, Kuvač Kraljević et al., 2013). Parents' Questionnaire was used to collect general socioeconomic data (mother’s educational level (MEL), father’s educational level (FEL) and family income (FI)). Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN – Gagarina et al. 2012 ; Croatian version - Hržica, Kuvač Kraljević) was used to obtain and analyse narrative samples (story structure and story comprehension). Results show that there are significant correlations between SES factors and language abilities. MEL correlates with the results on PPVT (r=.372, n=39, p=.02), while FEL correlates with the results on TROG (r=.450, n=39, p=.004). FEL correlates with the story comprehension (r=.425, n=33, p=.014). However, none of the SES factors show correlation with the story structure. FI has no correlation with test results or with narrative abilities. Test results, however, moderately correlate with narrative abilities (TROG and story structure: r=.429, n=33, p=.013 ; TROG and story comprehension: r=.519, n=33, p=.002 ; PPVT and story comprehension: r=.465, n=27, p=.014). These results point to the connection between narrative skills and more general language abilities, but also outline the role of parents’ education in language development. While the role of MEL has been well researched, the role of FEL has been less explored (overview: Pancsofar, 2010). Although most of the families have middle-high family income, and individual differences in that respect were not high, this research showed strong effects of other SES factors on language development.

narrative abilities, language development, socioeconomic status

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