Design an Interactive E-book and Examine the Effectiveness of its Bilingual Feature

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

The effectiveness of e-books in facilitating children’s language development and literacy skills has been supported by many studies (Korat, 2009; Korat & Shamir, 2008). However, there is little research on how e-books can be designed to assist second language learning. The impact of various e-book design features such as bilingual support on children’s English learning outcomes also remains controversial (Walker et al., 2017). To this end, our study used design-based research methodology to develop a multimedia interactive e-book for young English learners in China. We used a comparative case study to examine whether the e-book bilingual feature can promote children’s story comprehension and better engage parents with limited English proficiency in the shared reading process.
The research team used an iterative-design process to develop an interactive e-book that included the following features: 1) English narration; 2) Customized multimedia dictionary with example sentences that are linguistically and developmentally appropriate for young English learners. 3) Dialogue hotspots of the story characters; 4) Discussion prompts & feedback. An example of the demonstration page is shown in Figure 1.
We recruited 12 parent-child pairs from China and randomly assigned six pairs to the bilingual e-book condition with L1 support and six pairs to the monolingual, English-only e-book condition. After the shared reading sessions, children were assessed on a prompted retelling of the story and comprehension questions. Interviews are conducted with all parents and children to gain insight into their reading experiences. We have completed data collection for 7 of the 12 parent-child pairs and the remaining data collection will be completed by 10/07/2020.
Preliminary analysis of the participants who completed data collection showed that children who read the bilingual e-books tended to outperform the English-only group in answering comprehension questions, and their retellings were longer and included more idea units (shown in Table 1). The semi-structured interviews with children and parents revealed several key themes: (1) not all children preferred reading with parents to reading alone; (2) children loved the story and established parasocial relationships with the main character; (3) children’s favorite design feature was the hotspots on story characters; (4) parents think that the e-book is a good source of authentic and meaningful English language input for their children; (5) most parents do not have confidence translating the story to their children without Chinese translation and believed L1 support is necessary; (6) although children enjoyed interacting with the hotspots on the screen and listening to the dialogue from the story characters but some parents were concerned that these features distract the children from learning.
These preliminary results from both test scores and interviews indicate the positive impact of e-book L1 support in enhancing children’s digital learning outcomes and promoting parents’ engagement while shared-reading English stories in EFL settings. Our final findings may shed light on the design of bilingual digital story books for children in EFL settings.

Authors

• Xinyi Zeng, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Bolun Sun, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zhanpeng Zheng, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Nguyen, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yining Li, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Huanghao Yin, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuhui Chen, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kanglan Tang, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuan Meng, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hongyi Bao, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dandan Yang, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Penelope Collins, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author