Teacher dialogue style and children’s story comprehension

Abstract

The three components ofthe dialogue style are: a) a great number ofquestions asked by the teacher during the storytelling; b) three exclusive types ofquestions asked; and c) a variety ofquestions. The present study is intended to analyse the relationships between these components and children's story comprehension. The subjects were 48 children, aged 4;4 to 6;2, randomly divided into four groups of12 children each: the number, exclusive types, and variety groups, and a control group (the reading group). Twenty-four teachers were also divided randomly into four groups of six teachers each, and assigned to the four children's groups. Each teacher told the story to two children at a time; the children were chosen and paired randomly. Each child, singly, retold the story and then answered a questionaire on the structure ofthe story. The responses ofeach child were compared with the story text and considered correct ifapproriate to the contents ofthe story. The mean percentages of correct responses in the three experimental groups were higher than those of the control group. This difference is significant in the free retelling situation.

A Spoken-Language Intervention for School-Aged Boys With Fragile X Syndrome

“…One line of research suggests that comprehension is increased and children subsequently produce more sophisticated story retells after answering specific questions about the story (Pratt, Kerig, Cowan, & Cowan, 1988); that is, adult wh-questions can prompt the child to more fully understand and precisely express what is happening in a story (Pentimonti et al, 2012). Additionally, children’s recall of verbal material is enhanced when they answer questions that, presumably, focus their attention on relevant aspects of a story and when their mistakes in comprehension are corrected by their conversational partner (Albanese & Antoniotti, 1997). Adult wh-questions are useful in eliciting child verbal utterances that maintain a shared topic of conversation (Yoder, Davies, Bishop, & Munson, 1994).…”

A Review of Reminiscing in Early Childhood Settings and Links to Sustained Shared Thinking

“…In doing so, we acknowledge that there are a number of important dialogic features identified in research with older children which reflect important features of elaborative style or reminiscing. This includes open questions (Albanese and Antoniotti 1997), reformulations and elaborations in teacher talk (Cullen 2002;Gillies and Khan 2008;Lee 2007;Roediger and Pyc 2012), affirming or repeating a child's utterance to incorporate it into a shared discourse (Cullen 1998;2002), and the use of memory-rich language (Coffman et al 2008;Grammer et al 2013). However, as mentioned previously, our focus is exclusively on the 0 to 5 age range, where reminiscing and elaborative style in parent-child interactions has demonstrated positive impact on children's outcomes.…”

La pregunta como instrumento de lectura de narraciones

“…Los resultados apuntan a que utilizar varios tipos de preguntas facilita esta labor (Albanese y Antoniotti, 1997). Las estrategias docentes son gradualmente adoptadas por los alumnos, a través de las habilidades crecientes de la imitación y la escucha.…”