Students Speak the Language of the Test at Home
Because learning to read is dependent on children’s early language experience, the language or languages spoken at home can be important influences in reading literacy development. Exhibit 4.3 shows, on average, that 63 percent of the students reported “always” speaking the language of the test at home and most of the rest (31%) speaking it “almost always” or “sometimes.” There was relatively small variation in average achievement across these categories (511, 520, and 504, respectively), probably because of the many different interactions between the different languages which are spoken in homes and the various policies for the language(s) spoken in school, described in the PIRLS 2016 Encyclopedia. However, the few students (5% on average) who “never” spoke the language of the test at home had much lower average reading achievement (433).
