Do Conversational Turns Predict Children’s Vocabulary Development in a Shared Book Reading Program?

• In Event: 1-207 - Exploring Recent Techniques in Classroom Vocabulary Interventions

Integrative Statement

Child vocalizations and conversational turns are considered to be strongly associated with language development and learning (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). A recent study (Gilkerson et al., 2017) reported that turn-taking interactions accounted for 7-16% of the variance observed in other language assessments. Consequently, strategies to increase conversational engagement in early childhood classrooms have become increasingly timely, given the importance of oral language development in the early years.
Therefore, our purpose was to examine a shared book reading intervention designed to promote verbally responsive talk, with the goal of promoting word and world knowledge. Because young children need an extensive knowledge network of words and concepts, we designed a read-aloud program in which words were explicitly taught in the context of science concepts, organized around high priority topics, varied text genres, with explicit interactive discussions designed to increase conversational turn-taking of content-rich words and big ideas.
Hypotheses: We addressed the following questions:
1. What is the impact of the intervention on vocabulary and concepts for low-income preK-grade 1?
2. To what extent does the number of conversational turns predict children’s vocabulary and conceptual knowledge gains?
Methods: Children in preK - grade 1 from 69 classrooms in 12 elementary schools participated in the study (45% emergent bilingual; 15% sped). Schools ranged from 90%-100% FRL. Classrooms at the designated grade levels (preK; K; 1st) were randomly assigned to the treatment (N=39) or the control group (N=30). Although all children participated in the program, eight (4 boys; 4 girls) were randomly selected per classroom to participate in the study (N= 619 students).
Intervention: Children in the treatment group participated in a year-long shared book reading intervention, World of Words (WOW). Control classrooms continued with business-as-usual.
Measures: Standardized and author-created assessments were individually administered to children before and after the intervention. They included: EOWPVT, and two author-created measures to examine children’s vocabulary and knowledge of science concepts. For the treatment classrooms only, three lessons were audiotaped (90 minutes), transcribed and coded for the number of conversational turns and the length of child discourse, for a total of 117 transcripts.
Results: Due to the nested structure in our data, we conducted a 2-level HLM analysis.
Results indicated that treatment children made significantly higher gains in EOWPT, F (1, 80.50=13.32, p < .001; Science-related vocabulary, F (1, 74.86) =25.39 p < .001 and conceptual understanding F (1, 71.80) =37.23, p < .001. Examining teacher enactment of the intervention, the number of conversational turns per minute significantly predicted child gains in vocabulary F (1, 32.21) = 7.81, p < .009. Furthermore, conversational turns significantly predicted gains for English language learners F (1, 317) = 6.38, p=.012, as well as the proportion of longer utterances from the child, F (1,317) =6.39, p = .012.
Overall, children could name more words and could identify concepts more effectively when the intervention lessons incorporated a greater number of conversational turns, and encouraged longer child utterances. These results highlight the importance of verbal responsive talk and its contribution to more effective word learning.

Authors

• Susan Neuman, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Katie Danielson, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Preeti Ganesh Samudra, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author