Preschool Children’s Engagement and Verbal Participation During Shared Book Reading

Abstract

Introduction: Many studies suggest that shared book reading (SBR) helps children to develop verbal repertoires, which can be enhanced by using extratextual strategies for the explicit teaching of words. Few studies explicitly relate the type of extratextual strategy to children's levels of engagement and verbal participation. Objective: To verify the relationship between extratextual strategies for teaching words and measures of engagement and verbal participation of children, during SBR and complementary activity sessions. Methodology: Participants were 13 preschool children (five girls), aged between 4 and 5 years.Videos of three SBR sessions and a complementary activity session were transcribed and categorized according to the type of extratextual strategy used by the researcher, the type of engagement (active or passive, measured by children's non-verbal behavior), and the children's verbal participation during the sessions (related or not to the activity and the target words). Results: Total engagement was similar across all sessions, but it was more frequently related to the researcher than to peers. The strategies of explaining the meaning of target words and starting conversations seemed to evoke more speeches from children related to the target words than highlighting and verbal instruction strategies; during this ones, verbal utterances related to the activity, or the story were more frequent. Conclusions: some extratextual strategies seem to establish more favorable contexts for children's verbal participation, and it's essential to organize contingencies that further engagement and verbal participation about the taught content since these two response classes seem to be complementary.