TEACHING AND LEARNING
PRESCHOOL BOOK READING: TEACHER, CHILD, AND TEXT
CONTRIBUTIONS TO VOCABULARY GROWTH
BETSY G. WATSON
Dissertation under the direction of Professor Dale Farran
Vocabulary is one area of language growth that receives attention in many preschool programs. Teachers read books to children in whole group settings and use that context to provide support for word meaning through their reading of and talk about the text. Growing attention is given in preschool literacy curricula, guidance from teacher practitioner journals, and professional development about how vocabulary should be supported during book reading. This project involved examining the influence of teacher, child, and text contributions to vocabulary learning during whole group book reading of fiction and nonfiction texts.
Using videotapes of seven teachers reading four fiction and four nonfiction texts, ratings of child involvement during whole group book reading, and teacher interview and book reading frequency data, this study sought to answer three main questions. The first question related to examining how the naturally occurring variation in the rate of teachers vocabulary facilitation during book reading is linked to growth in childrens vocabulary outcomes. The second question focused on the influence of childrens involvement during book reading on vocabulary growth. The final question involved the effect of genre on the rate of teachers vocabulary facilitation during book reading. Book-specific and distal standardized vocabulary measures were used as outcomes.
Results indicated that relatively higher rates of teachers vocabulary talk during whole group book reading negatively influenced childrens distal word learning gains and had no effect on target learning gains. Also, results were negative for the influence of child involvement on word learning. The effect of genre was that teachers used a higher rate of vocabulary talk during nonfiction reading, but frequency of nonfiction reading was not related to word learning gains. The results of this study raise concerns about teachers unintentional overuse of vocabulary talk, about how level of experience and perception of strategies influence teachers behaviors during reading, and about the appropriate purposes of whole group book reading to support childrens word learning in preschool.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03282008-104911 |
| Date | 10 April 2008 |
| Creators | Watson, Betsy G. |
| Contributors | Mark Lipsey, PhD, David Dickinson, PhD, Dale Farran, PhD, Deborah W. Rowe, PhD |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03282008-104911/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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