IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v3y2013i4p2158244013507270.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Importance of Literacy in the Home Language

Author

Listed:
  • Susana A. Eisenchlas
  • Andrea C. Schalley
  • Diana Guillemin

Abstract

While advantages of literacy in the home language have been widely documented, the Australian education system has not been proactive in providing institutional support for its development. This paper investigates the impact of (il)literacy in the home language on the academic, affective, and social development of bilingual/multilingual children and proposes principles that home-language-literacy programs should meet to be effective. It discusses programs that, although designed to develop literacy or second-language proficiency mainly in classroom contexts, could be easily adapted to address the needs of the linguistically and culturally diverse Australian context. We argue that the cost of not investing in successful home-language-literacy programs will be higher in the long run than their implementation costs and recommend that Australia should consider supporting grassroots home-language-literacy programs in a push to improve overall literacy outcomes for Australian home-language speakers.

Suggested Citation

  • Susana A. Eisenchlas & Andrea C. Schalley & Diana Guillemin, 2013. "The Importance of Literacy in the Home Language," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(4), pages 21582440135, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:2158244013507270
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244013507270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244013507270
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244013507270?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:2158244013507270. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.