한국과 일본 만 3, 4, 5세 유아의 연령, 성, 소득수준에 따른 읽기, 쓰기 능력

The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlation between reading and writing abilities of three, four, and five-year-old Korean and Japanese children, and the differences in each of their abilities according to age, gender, and family income. To achieve that goal, a survey was carried out on 1,624 young children in 44 early childhood education facilities located in Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea, and on 1,780 young children in 14 early childhood education facilities in Tokyo, Japan. The results of the survey showed that, as children’s age increased, their reading and writing abilities also tended to increase. Detailed results of the survey questions are as follows. First, both in Korea and Japan, girls’ reading and writing scores were shown to be higher than those of boys. In reading, no significant interactive effect was shown between children’s gender and age, and in all age groups, female children showed higher reading scores than male children. With writing scores, however, there was significant interactive effect between gender and age, which showed that the gap between the writing abilities of male and female children decreased as their age increased. Second, reading and writing scores were higher in high-income family children than in lower-income family children both in Korea and Japan. With reading scores, there was interactive effect between age and family income for both Korean and Japanese children, causing the gap between the children of high-income and low-income families to decrease as age increased. With writing scores, however, interactive effect between age and family income was shown to exist only for Korean children. Third, reading and writing scores were shown to be correlated in both Korean and Japanese children.