![]() Data from vocabulary test norming projects show that already at the age of five, the most proficient children (i.e., 98th percentile) exhibit a vocabulary knowledge that the poorest two percent of the population need a further 12 years to catch up – at age 17 ( Lenhard et al., 2015). ![]() Biemiller and Slonim (2001) found that second grade children in the highest achieving quartile had an average estimated vocabulary of twice that of children in the lowest quartile. These differences are reflected in children’s language skills. In terms of qualitative differences in language exposure, the maternal speech of high SES homes contains more tokens and longer mean lengths of utterance than speech of low SES households ( Hoff, 2006) and lower SES mothers use a less varied vocabulary and syntactic structures ( Hoff, 2003 Huttenlocher et al., 2010).ĭifferences also exist in the home language environments (HLEs) that children are exposed to ( Burgess et al., 2002 Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002 Weigel et al., 2006). The language environments of children vary greatly: children of parents with a high socio-economic status (SES) roughly hear three times as many words over the course of 1 week than children from low-SES households ( Hart and Risley, 1995). ![]() Because children’s language skills at school entry – especially their vocabulary skills – are a powerful predictor of later academic achievement, resolving these discrepancies is a central goal of preschool education. Substantial discrepancies in language development exist in preschool age, they tend to persist throughout the school years, and rarely resolve ( Biemiller and Slonim, 2001). Findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to optimizing shared reading as a method of fostering language. However, in the Elaborative Storytelling group, children were the least restless. All three experimental groups made comparable gains on target words from pre- to posttest and there was no difference between groups in story memory. Measured outcomes were receptive and expressive target vocabulary, story memory, and children’s behavior during story sessions. The study was a 3 × 2 pre-posttest randomized design with 126 preschoolers spanning 1 week. To systematically investigate potential benefits of children as storytellers, we contrasted this approach to two experimental groups, an Elaborative Storytelling group employing word-learning techniques but no storytelling by children and a Read-Aloud group, excluding any additional techniques. We developed an approach termed Interactive Elaborative Storytelling (IES), which employs both word-learning techniques and children’s storytelling in a shared-reading setting. The effects of engaging children as storytellers on vocabulary development have been less well studied. Positive effects of shared reading for children’s language development are boosted by including instruction of word meanings and by increasing interactivity. ![]() 2Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.1Department of Educational Science, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.Enni Vaahtoranta 1* Jan Lenhart 2 Sebastian Suggate 1 Wolfgang Lenhard 2 ![]()
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