The relationship between receptive language skills and school readiness

The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationship between language and academic readiness. The current study included 56 preschool children. Specifically, 9 two year olds participated, 18 three year olds participated, 21 four year olds, and 8 five year olds participated. Twenty-three were female and twenty-three were male. Each child was administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT III), followed by both the School Readiness Composite (SRC) of the Bracken Basic Concept Scale - Revised or BBCS-R. A Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the relationship between the standard scores of the PPVT III, and the standard scores for the SRC. A moderate positive correlation was found (r (54) = .388, p < .01), indicating a significant linear relationship between the two variables. Children who score higher on the PPVT tend to also have higher scores in academic readiness as measured by the SRC.