Early literacy awareness of families and their preferences for language support activities during preschool period

Preschool period is critical for language development as well as for all areas of development. Since the most important supporter of the preschool child is the family, opinions of the families about early literacy skills should be examined. The main purpose of this survey research is to describe the early literacy awareness of preschool children's families and their preferences for language support activities. In the 2018-2019 academic year, the parents of children who continue formal and private preschools and kindergartens in Eskişehir, Tepebaşı constituted the study population. The sample of the study consisted of 640 selected parents using cluster sampling. The data were collected by using the Parental Opinions for Language Skills in Preschool Period developed by the researcher. In the analysis of the data, t test, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U, correlation and chi-square tests were applied by using IBM SPSS 22.0 package program. It has been shown that families offer their children early experiences of moderate literacy at home. It was concluded that there are statistically significant differences in the experiences of families based on the child's gender, the type of school, and some demographic characteristics of the parents. It was observed that parents had high expectations from schools in supporting children's language skills. It has been concluded that parental preferences for language support activities differ according to some demographic variables such as the socioeconomic layer or number of siblings.