Using strategic pauses during shared reading with preschoolers: Time for prediction is better than time for reflection when learning new words

Abstract

Preschoolers can learn vocabulary through shared book reading, especially when given the opportunity to predict and/or reflect on the novel words encountered in the story. Readers often pause and encourage children to guess or repeat novel words during shared reading, and prior research has suggested a positive correlation between how much readers dramatically pause and how well words are later retained. This experimental study of 60 3- to 5-year-olds compared the effects of placing pauses before target words to encourage predictions, placing pauses after target words to encourage reflection, or not pausing at all on children’s retention of novel monster names in a rhymed storybook. Children who heard dramatic pauses that invited prediction before the monsters were named identified more at test than children who heard either post-target pauses or the story read verbatim. In addition, there was an interaction between pre- vs. post-target pausing and whether the pauses were silent or replaced with an eliciting question, such that silent pauses were more effective before the target words, while eliciting questions were more effective after. Overall, dramatic silent pauses before new words in a story were found to best help children attend to and remember those new words.

Rhyme over time: Vocabulary learning through daily reading aloud at home with children

“…Across the sample of children in this study, there was evidence that participants remembered many of the monster names that they had been exposed to in the books they heard read aloud. Children’s identification scores ( M = 6.97, SD = 1.40) were significantly greater than chance (4.00), t (29) = 11.60, p < .001, d = 2.12, and children’s production scores ( M = 3.00, SD = 2.12) were anecdotally higher than in other comparison studies testing children’s recall of these same monster names (Read, 2014; Read et al, 2019), and were also significantly greater than 0, t (29) = 7.75, p < .001, d = 1.41.…”

“…The storybooks used in this study were developed and used in previous studies of the impact of rhyme on new vocabulary learning (Read, 2014; Read et al, 2019). The full text and illustrations of each storybook version can be viewed in the Open Science Framework (OSF) project link: https://osf.io/eqn73/?view_only=80543879c1c84b5c886bcadd27ab2862.…”

“…Parents were randomly assigned to receive either the rhymed or unrhymed version of the ‘Meet the Friendly Monsters’ storybook that has been used in previous studies of novel word learning from shared reading (e.g. Read, 2014; Read et al, 2019). Parents were instructed to take the book home with a digital audio recorder, and read with their child five times over 5 days.…”

“…The two tasks allowed for two probes of children’s retention of the monster names, with the easier task preceding the more challenging task as in previous research (e.g. Read et al, 2019; Read & Quirke, 2018) to give children a chance to ‘warm up’ to the testing situation and to remind them of the monster names and images before the more challenging production task to support their optimal performance. This ordering of tasks was consistent across all children and thus posed no confound for interpreting potential differences between conditions in the results.…”

“…‘What do you think will happen next?’; Ewers & Brownson, 1999; Roberts et al, 2005; Whitehurst et al, 1988), and by re-reading the same book to increase familiarity (Horst et al, 2011; Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Sénéchal, 1997). In addition, specifically highlighting challenging or unfamiliar words in various ways, such as dramatically pausing before new words (Read, 2014; Read et al, 2019), repeating, defining, or explaining them (Elley, 1989; Korat et al, 2018), or even directly asking questions and making comments about the new words in the book (Blewitt et al, 2009; Justice, 2002; Sénéchal, 1997) can increase children’s retention of those new words highlighted from the book while reading. While many read-aloud strategies appear to bolster young children’s vocabulary learning from shared reading, little research has closely examined the spontaneous, natural use of different strategies for highlighting new words within caregiver–child shared reading in the home, nor compared the use of specific strategies based on the type of language used already in the text of the book being read.…”