Nonverbal Supports for Word Learning in Pre-Kindergarten Shared Book Readings

• In Event: Understanding New Approaches to Early Language and Literacy Development

Abstract

Young children draw on a rich assortment of multimodal cues in their environment to learn new words. Nonverbal supports, such as teachers’ gestures, help them gain information about how a new word label applies to an action, person, or concept according to the Emergentist Coalition Model (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2004). Indeed, children’s exposure to gesturing prior to school entry is a key predictor of their vocabulary development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). To date, the literature does not have clear answers about the extent to which prekindergarten teachers may be using gestures to enhance word learning, or the extent to which such nonverbal supports might foster prekindergarten children’s vocabulary development. The present study seeks to address this gap by describing the nonverbal gesturing practices of Head Start prekindergarten teachers during whole-class, shared book reading (SBR) sessions, identifying teachers’ gesturing types, and relating these gesture types to children’s end-of-year vocabulary scores.
The present study represents a secondary analysis of data drawn from a larger randomized control trial. Videos of 33 teachers enacting read alouds to 306 children (98% African American, 46% female, 4;6 years old at pre-test) in Head Start prekindergarten classrooms were coded for teachers’ use of five gestures types and transcribed for linguistic analyses.
Teachers gestured regularly, averaging 3.44 gestures per minute. Multilevel models assessed the relation of teachers’ gestures and children’s end-of-year vocabulary scores controlling for teachers’ total speech, children’s nonverbal intelligence, teachers’ experience teaching Head Start, and children’s vocabulary pretest scores. Teachers’ total gestures per minute were positively related to children’s end-of-year receptive vocabulary scores (b = 0.88, p = .014), indicating students in classrooms where teachers used more gestures per minute had higher end-of-year receptive vocabulary scores than those in classrooms where teachers used fewer gestures per minute. A second model involving a composite variable, meaning-focused gestures per minute, found that meaning-focused gestures per minute were significantly related to children’s end-of-year receptive vocabulary scores (b = .81, p = .031) when controlling for the above-mentioned variables.
This study contributes to a literature that, to date, has been heavily focused on analyzing verbal, rather than nonverbal, input from teachers as the main driver of children’s oral language growth in classrooms. Our first key finding in the present study was that teachers frequently gestured while reading and commenting on the text, and that many of these gestures provided an additional layer of word learning support through nonverbal means. In other words, gestures were an important part of teachers’ scaffolding and meaning-making practices for children during SBR. The second key finding was that teachers’ use of gestures, particularly meaning-focused gestures, was positively related to children’s end-of-year receptive vocabulary scores, even when controlling for variables previously identified as relating to children’s word learning. This finding suggests that teachers’ use of gestures during SBR may be an important and understudied way that prekindergarten children acquire words in a classroom context, particularly for the novice word learners in our sample. Teachers’ gestures may provide support for children’s word learning, above and beyond linguistic input.

Authors

• Erica M. Barnes, University at Albany - SUNY
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Burke Hadley, University of South Florida - Tampa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Lawson-Adams, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• David K. Dickinson, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author