Research Supporting the Use of Dialogic Reading Strategies in AdultChild Shared Book Reading

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Research Supporting the Use of Dialogic Reading
Strategies in Adult-Child Shared Book
Reading Andrea Zevenbergen, Ph.D. Department of
Psychology State University of New York at
Fredonia
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• Dialogic Reading
• A method of shared adult-child reading in which
  both the adult and the child have the role of
  storyteller.
• The child is encouraged to take an increasing
  role as storyteller across repeated readings of a
  book, and as the childs language skills develop.
• The adults role is to prompt the child with
  questions, expand the childs verbalizations, and
  praise the childs efforts.

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• Basic Dialogic Reading Strategies
• Ask the child questions
• Follow the childs responses with repetition,
  praise, encouragement, and expansion
• Follow the childs interest
• Have the child repeat new information
• Re-read books multiple times

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The PEER Sequence P Prompt (e.g., What is
that in the tree?) E Evaluate (e.g., Thats
right! Its a kind of bird. Its called an
owl.) E Expand (e.g., The owl is in the
pine tree.) R Repeat (e.g., Can you say
that? Can you say owl?)
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Types of Questions CROWD C Completion prompt
(e.g., A is for _________.) R Recall prompt
(e.g., Can you remember some of the things
Gloria did at school?) O Open-ended prompt
(e.g., What happens next in the story?) W
Wh- prompt (e.g., How did they get out of the
water?) D Distancing prompt (e.g., Where did
we go swimming?)
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• The Importance of Emergent Literacy Skills for
  Later Literacy
• Preschool childrens vocabulary, narrative
  skills, letter naming ability, and print concepts
  knowledge have been found to predict later
  reading abilities.
• Interventions which facilitate childrens
  development of these skills may be beneficial for
  childrens later literacy abilities.

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• Theoretical Basis for Dialogic Reading
• Practice and feedback in using language
  facilitate young childrens language development
  (Whitehurst Menchaca, 1988).
• Shared book reading facilitates the
  establishment of joint attention between adult
  and child, which aids in language development
  (Tomasello Farrar, 1986).

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• Theoretical Basis for Dialogic Reading
• Appropriately scaffolded verbal interactions
  (i.e., working within the childs zone of
  proximal development) with others contribute to a
  more rapid growth of childrens language skills
  than would occur naturally (Vygotsky, 1978).

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• Summary of Research Findings
• The most consistent effects of dialogic reading
  have been found for childrens expressive
  language skills, including expressive vocabulary,
  verbal fluency, and mean length utterance.
• Studies have also found gains in childrens
  knowledge of print concepts, writing abilities,
  linguistic complexity, alphabet letter naming,
  rhyming abilities, narrative skills, and
  receptive vocabulary.

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• Possible Reasons for Diversity in Research
  Findings
• Researchers have used a variety of outcome
  measures, intervention durations, reading
  partners, and types of books.
• Studies have varied in the levels of training
  provided to teachers and parents and the degree
  to which the adults following of the techniques
  was monitored.

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• Other Findings Related to
• Dialogic Reading
• Arnold et al. (1994) showed that 2-year-olds
  showed greater gains in language skills when
  their parents were taught to use dialogic reading
  through videotapes than when the parents were
  taught the reading strategies by an individual
  instructor.
• Huebner and Meltzoff (2005) found that
  in-person training in dialogic reading (with
  videotape) was more effective than
  self-instruction videotape training in dialogic
  reading.

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• Other Findings Related to Dialogic Reading
  (continued)
• Dialogic reading has been found to be an
  acceptable intervention to parents (Blom-Hoffman
  et al., 2006 Fung et al., 2005).
• Whitehurst et al. (1994) and Lonigan and
  Whitehurst (1998) found that the language gains
  made by children who were read to dialogically in
  both home and school settings were greater than
  those made by children who were read to
  dialogically only in school.

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• Other Findings Related to Dialogic Reading
  (continued)
• Zevenbergen et al. (2007) found no difference
  between distancing questions and wh- questions
  in eliciting preschoolers speech (i.e., assessed
  by total number of words, and number of different
  words) during shared picture book reading.
• Whitehurst et al. (1999) showed no effect of a
  dialogic reading intervention conducted in Head
  Start on 1st and 2nd graders reading skills
  (i.e.,
• word reading and comprehension).

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• Future Research Directions
• What are the long-term effects of dialogic
  reading interventions?
• What are the socio-emotional benefits of
  dialogic reading (e.g., parent-child
  relationships, social and emotional development
  Doyle Bramwell, 2006)?
• What gains can children make from dialogic
  reading interactions using alphabet books
  (Lachner, Zevenbergen, Zevenbergen, in press)?

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• Future Research Directions (continued)
• Does training in dialogic reading change the
  way that adults interact with children outside of
  the reading context (e.g., repeating and
  expanding child verbalizations, looking for
  opportunities to teach new vocabulary)?
• To what extent may dialogic reading techniques
  lead to gains in vocabulary, verbal fluency, and
  narrative skills in older children (Brabham
  Lynch-Brown, 2002)?