Emergent Bilingual Preschoolers’ Multimodal Engagement Behaviors in Read Aloud

• In Event: Toward Just Educational Renewal Through Educational Semiotics

Abstract

Shared reading, where texts are read aloud (RA) to children, bolsters preschoolers’ developing emergent literacy skills. For emergent bilingual (EB) preschoolers still emerging in their biliteracy, RAs are a central site for their exposure and participation in reading activity across languages as they develop and are socialized into reading activity (Paciga et al., 2009). EBs rely on multimodal aspects in RAs such as proximity, space, time structures, and interaction patterns to understand how to “do school” and gain access into learning how to read across languages (Mantei & Kervin, 2018). The use of non-verbal modes such as, gesture, posture, and gaze, with verbal modes (i.e., spoken language, sound, and noise; Wohlwend, 2008) supports children’s ability to process story events, engage in the reading experience, and develop positive future reading identities (Häggström, 2020).

This study is guided by Bengochea et al.’s (2018) Transmodality framework to understand: How do EB preschool students showcase reading engagement through verbal and embodied behaviors in RAs? The Transmodality framework indexes the visual (e.g., gaze, print, image), verbal (e.g., trans/languaging, mood, sound verbalization, initiator/ responder roles), and actional modes (e.g., manipulation, gesture, spatial movement) of culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers. The analysis focuses on the daily English whole-group RA activity of one preschool classroom situated in a two-way Spanish-English dual language bilingual education program. The focal teacher, Ms. Saana, served as the English-model teacher, conducting large-group RAs with 18 EB preschoolers in this mixed-age preschool. Six of these RAs, spanning from 23-to-30 minutes, were captured via digital video recordings and transcribed and analyzed using the Transmodality Framework.

Findings suggest (a) EB preschoolers express their reading involvement multimodally across a continuum of attentiveness (i.e., attentive, attention divergent, and inattentive behaviors), (b) EB preschoolers’ efforts at contemplating story aspects are hindered by compliance-based social and behavioral RA expectations, and (c) EB preschoolers’ expressions of curiosity, interest, and social desires for reading occur within moments of flexible instruction and are thwarted in less dialogic RAs. Distinguishing inattentive from attention divergent behaviors recognizes children’s continued interest in the RA while being responsive to the visual, verbal, or actional modalities integral to children’s self-management and meaning-making. Students’ behaviors to adhere to the interactional format of less-dialogic RAs, such as displaying undivided attention by quietly listening to the teacher’s comments, questions, and/or reading of the text, were observed to override the potential for child-initiated engagement, such as to express their curiosity, interest, personal connections, or engage in community discussion.

Implications suggest children’s engagement/ interest in RA may transgress modalities conventionally labeled as attentiveness (e.g., silence, crossed legs, eyes on the teacher, hands kept to oneself, stillness) or inattentiveness (e.g., gazing in other directions, touching someone/an object, moving around, making noises). Since EBs’ semiotic resources support their meaning-making within/across developing languages (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Taylor & Leung, 2001), restrictive RA compliance expectations or interactional structures may thwart aspects of EBs’ reading involvement, and thus, comprehension and learning (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

Authors

• Sabrina F. Sembiante, Florida Atlantic University

• Kimberly Theophile, Florida Atlantic University

• Mileidis Gort, University of Colorado - Boulder