A book reading intervention with preschool children who have limited vocabularies: The benefits of regular reading and dialogic reading

Abstract

The authors examined the effects of storybook reading on the acquisition of vocabulary of 36 preschool children who had poor expressive vocabulary skills, averaging 13 months behind chronological age. The authors tested whether the beneficial effects of storybook reading would be greater when children were active participants as compared to children who participated in a regular shared book-reading situation. Book reading occurred in groups of eight children, and all children were exposed to the same books, read twice. The results of this study revealed that children with limited vocabularies learned new vocabulary from shared book-reading episodes. Children in the dialogic-reading condition made significantly larger gains in vocabulary introduced in the books, as well as gains on a standardized expressive vocabulary test, than did the children in a regular book-reading situation. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.