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全面的家长干预，以促进儿童早期识字的意义为基础的组成部分：词汇知识，口语技能和故事技能。语言技能是孩子日后阅读成功的有力预测因素。成人在阅读和谈话中的插话风格与学前班结束时儿童的语言和识字成果有关，但迄今为止还没有其他研究通过实验分离出这些不同候选人对促进儿童识字的相对好处。在对话式阅读中，成人读者在阅读过程中提出开放式问题，赞扬并扩展儿童的话语，试图让儿童最终讲述故事。在详细的谈话中，成人让孩子参与到关于过去事件的谈话中，因为他们一起讲述了一个故事。在解释性对话中，成人将新的词汇和常识引入到与儿童的日常对话中。在两年的时间里，将从马萨诸塞州伍斯特市为低收入家庭服务的日托中心和幼儿园招募160名3岁和4岁的儿童。家庭将被随机分配到对话式阅读组、详细对话组、解释性对话组、组合式阅读/对话组或无治疗对照组。预测措施将评估儿童的接受性和表达性词汇，字母知识，语音意识，叙事技巧，识字兴趣，以及他们父母的语言，书籍阅读和对话风格。在学前一年，将通过录像带、讲习班和角色扮演技术每月一次对父母进行阅读和对话技能培训。干预年将在80名儿童3岁时进行，其余80名儿童4岁时进行。在干预结束时和幼儿园结束时，将对儿童进行所有预测试措施的后测试。在幼儿园后测中将增加一项对单词解码能力的测量。对话式阅读和扩展对话（阐述性和解释性）都有望提高儿童基于意义的识字能力，但从过去的研究来看，对话式阅读对表达性词汇更有效，而扩展对话对接受性词汇更有效。对话式阅读和精心的对话都能提高儿童的叙事能力。将这三种情况放在一起进行研究，将使我们能够确定全面的家长干预的关键要素，以促进儿童的语言和识字能力在学前阶段。

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.