Enhancing Low-Income Children's Emergent Literacy

描述(由申请人提供)：本研究的长期目标是促进家长的全面干预，以促进儿童早期识字的基于意义的组成部分：词汇知识、口语技能和故事技能。语言技能是孩子未来阅读成功的有力预测因素。成人在读书和交谈中的互动风格与儿童在学龄前结束时的语言和识字结果有关，但到目前为止，还没有其他研究从实验上区分出这些不同候选人在促进儿童识字方面的相对好处。在对话阅读中，成人读者在读书过程中提出开放式的问题，赞扬并扩展孩子的话语，试图让孩子最终讲述故事。在详细的对话中，成人让孩子参与到关于过去事件的对话中，因为他们一起讲述了一个故事。在说明性对话中，成人将新词汇和常识引入孩子的日常对话中。在两年的时间里，160名3岁和4岁的儿童将从马萨诸塞州伍斯特的日托中心和为低收入家庭服务的幼儿园招募。这些家庭将被随机分配到对话阅读组、详述对话组、解释性对话组、综合阅读/对话组或不接受治疗的控制组。前测将评估儿童的接受性和表现性词汇、字母知识、语音意识、叙事技能、识字兴趣，以及他们父母的语言、读书和对话风格。在学龄前一年，将通过录像带、工作坊和角色扮演技巧每月一次对家长进行阅读和对话技能培训。干预年将为80名儿童的3岁和其余80名儿童的4岁。在干预结束和幼儿园结束时，将对儿童进行所有前测措施的后测。在幼儿园的后测中将增加一项单词识别能力的测试。对话阅读和扩展对话(详述性和解释性)都有望提高儿童基于意义的阅读能力，但以往的研究预测，对话阅读对于表达词汇和扩展对话对于接受性词汇将更有效。对话阅读和精心设计的对话都有望提高儿童的叙事技能。在一项研究中将这三个背景结合在一起，将使我们能够确定全面的家长干预的关键要素，以促进儿童在学龄前阶段的语言和识字技能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of this research is to contribute to a comprehensive parent intervention for promoting the meaning-based components of children's early literacy: vocabulary knowledge, oral language skills, and story skills. Language skills are a strong predictor of children's later reading success. Adult interactional style during book reading and during conversation is linked to children's language and literacy outcomes by the end of preschool, but no other study to date has separated out experimentally the relative benefits of these different candidates for promoting children's literacy. In dialogic reading, the adult reader asks open-ended questions, praises, and expands upon the child's utterances during book reading in an attempt to get the child to eventually tell the story. In elaborative conversations, the adult engages the child in a conversation about a past event as together they narrate a story. In explanatory conversations, the adult introduces new vocabulary and general knowledge into everyday conversations with the child. Over a two-year period, 160 3- and 4-year-old children will be recruited from daycare centers and preschools serving low-income families in Worcester, MA. Families will be randomly assigned to either a dialogic reading group, an elaborative conversation group, an explanatory conversation group, a combined reading/conversation group, or a no-treatment control group. Pretest measures will assess children's receptive and expressive vocabulary, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, narrative skill, interest in literacy, and their parents' language, book-reading, and conversational style. Reading and conversational skills training for parents will be conducted through videotapes, workshops, and role playing techniques once a month during the preschool year. The intervention year will occur at age 3 for 80 children and at age 4 for the remaining 80 children. At the end of the intervention and again at the end of kindergarten, children will be post-tested on all pretest measures. A measure of word decoding ability will be added at the kindergarten post-testing. Both dialogic reading and extended conversations (elaborative and explanatory) are expected to enhance children's meaning-based literacy skills, but from past research it is predicted that dialogic reading will be more effective for expressive vocabulary and extended conversations for receptive vocabulary. Dialogic reading and elaborative conversations are both predicted to enhance children's narrative skills. Pulling these three contexts together in one study will allow us to determine the critical elements of a comprehensive parent intervention for promoting children's language and literacy skills in the preschool period.