Literacy and Early Childhood: A Culturally Responsive Program for Mexican Mothers

Background

An area of schooling that has received significant attention when it comes to immigrant children and families is literacy, especially emergent literacy. Emergent literacy is a “continuously emerging and evolving ability that results from one's experiences and experiments with language in literacy contexts” (Leu & Kinzer, 1999, p. 81). Effective literacy practices between children and parents is seen as the cornerstone to overall success at school and as necessary for emergent literacy to flourish. Several research studies have noted a significant gap between some Latino children and their native English-speaking counterparts when it comes to emergent literacy practices at home, and when thinking about overall vocabulary learning and growth during the early years. Often, this gap is attributed to the type of verbal interactions and exposure to words Mexican parents provide to their children prior to schooling. Researchers have indicated how vocabulary learning, regardless of the language of instruction, can significantly impact cognitive development due to the interconnections between language and learning (Tamis-LeMonda, Song, Kuchirko, Kalman, & Roufman, 2014). Because language learning happens in a “socio-cultural” context, it is important to keep in mind how “...vocabulary is the product of social interactions in which children are continually exposed to new words and associated concepts” (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2014, p. 71). Parents play an important role in the type of interactions and exposure to words their children have since “...rich language input benefits children by promoting growth in vocabulary that snowballs into enhanced cognitive skills in multiple domains” (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2014, p.85).