Bilingual e-Book Platform for Early Childhood Literacy Development and Intrafamiliar Communication

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PROJECT SUMMARY The number and quality of utterances a child is exposed to, especially during interactions with his/her parents and caregivers, has profound effects on early language development, and forms the foundation for early language acquisition—a critical developmental process and established predictor of later interpersonal and academic achievement. Storytelling is a powerful medium for promoting language development, particularly when contextualized in parent-child co-reading. While there exists a vast array of children's literature, bilingual content is grossly underrepresented in children's publications, despite the rapidly increasing proportion of language minorities in the US. As a consequence, opportunities for facilitating language development and the quality of interactions through children's literature are constricted for children in homes with limited English proficient (LEP) parents. A more conscientious and sophisticated approach to bilingual storytelling, building on authentic language acquisition mechanism, is warranted to support the literacy development of children from minority language households. Addressing these challenges, this project will assess the feasibility of a comprehensive ecosystem for the creation of bilingual children's literature, incorporating a feedback mechanism allowing parents to gain insight in interactional patterns with their children built into eBook format. Building on the concept of code switching, a natural way of acquiring a language, the content creation methodology guides the production of content with a unique language blend, allowing gradually increased exposure to a second language as proficiency progresses. This approach is based on standardized linguistic rules, developed to promote a pedagogical transition between languages. The feedback feature in the platform will be enabled through recordings of reading sessions, and will provide users with a report of communication behaviors occurring between a parent and child. In approaching language development through more authentic representations of bilingual content, the Blossom ecosystem will contribute to alleviating disparities related to language acquisition among children in LEP households. We will partner with a number of professionals in the early-childhood education space and veterans from the children's media industry and publishing throughout the development and evaluation phases of this novel platform.