Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v22i0.3908
Is There a Connection between Reading to Children and the Child’s Involvement in Reading Activities?
Katarina Matijević
orcid.org/0000-0003-3448-7972
; Public Open School HD Petrinja Matija Gupca 2, 44250 Petrinja, Croatia
Renata Bernić
; Technical School Sisak Lađarska ul. 1, 44000, Sisak, Croatia
Abstract
The ability to read is vital. Reading paves the way to success in school, which can
build self-confidence and motivate your child to set high expectations from life.
Children are “learners” by nature and they learn from the prenatal phase. The
child learns by observing the environment and imitating the role models. Likewise,
children learn to read encouraged by examples from the environment. Reading
aloud to children is the best way to get them interested in reading. By reading,
they will grow to love stories and books. Eventually they will want to read on their
own. To research parental involvement in reading activities with children, we used
Questionnaire of the Hanen Center for Evaluating Parental Involvement in the
Development of Reading Skills. We wanted to investigate if there is a statistically
significant difference in parents’ engagement in reading to children and with
children with regard to their parents’ academic education, number of parents who
live with a child, and financial income in the household. We also wanted to find out
if there is a statistically significant association between parental involvement in the
child’s reading activities and their child’s involvement in reading activities. There
were 716 respondents. Findings indicated that demographic data, such as parents’
academic education, number of parents who live with a child, and financial income
in the household have a statistically significant impact on parental involvement in
reading activities with their children, but also on their child’s involvement in reading
activities. The results show statistically significant association between parental
involvement in the child’s reading activities and their child’s involvement in reading
activities, as expected. This paper points out the importance of reading to children,
no matter their age, since the use of those kind of activities has been proven to be
effective in promoting literacy skills, in previous researches as well as in this one.
Keywords
parental involvement; promoting reading skills; reading; reading activities; reading skills
Hrčak ID:
251253
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2020.
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