Do Toddlers Learning Dutch as a Second Language Benefit from Digital Books and Why?

• In Event: When Technology is Here to Stay: Maximizing the Potential of E-Books for Learning in Young Childhood

Abstract

Because books are a richer source for language learning than all other activities in families (Sosa, 2016; Dickinson & Morse, 2019) book reading is stimulated to promote second-language learning in families. In practice, however, many barriers affect caregivers’ implementation of shared reading in families (Justice et al., 2015). This study explores whether digital books with multimedia features to support story comprehension and a voice-over may be more stimulating for second-language learning than paper books. Families in this study were immigrant families with a diversity of home languages (Turkish, Chinese, Arabic, Berber, Russian, Portuguese, Swahili, and Somalian). The 28 children, 26 to 41 months old (M = 31.7 months, SD = 14.7), were recruited through three day-care centers. During four weeks the participating families had access to a set of digital books and during another four weeks to a similar set of paper books. The order, “digital then paper” or “paper then digital”, was counterbalanced. The children’s Dutch vocabulary was tested before and after the four-week-periods. Parents were interviewed about book reading in the intervention periods. For part of the children, Data Analytics were available showing which days the book platform was entered, which books were opened and which books were read completely. In a classic ‘‘cross-over’’ effect, one expects to see an opposite pattern of improvement over time for the two experimental groups: over the period T1–T2, the ‘‘digital then paper’’ group should show a greater improvement than the ‘‘paper then digital’’ group, whereas during the period T2–T3 one would expect to see the opposite effect. The direct statistical test for this effect - the interaction between experimental group and the quadratic contrast of time point was significant (F[1, 25] = 4.822, p = .038.). Post-hoc t-tests confirmed that this was principally driven by changes across the respective intervention periods for each group, the T1–T2 difference being significant for the ‘‘digital then reading’’ group (t[12] = 2.273, p = .042), and the T2–T3 difference marginal for the ‘‘paper then digital’’ group (t[14] = 1.289, p = .10, one-tailed). Exploring the characteristics of book reading, a main difference between paper and digital seems to be the number of books read during the intervention periods. Children read 12 to 24 paper books, whereas they read on average 37 digital books (range: 21-98 books). The higher number of digital books may explain the advantage that digital books have for learning a second language. As children hear more digital than paper books, there is a substantial difference in input of Dutch which may explain the difference in growth (Logan et al., 2019). Parents report more interaction and more child responses during paper book reading but the effect this has on learning, apparently, does not outweigh the effect of the number of books.

Authors

• Adriana Bus, University of Stavanger
  Presenting Author

• Trude Hoel, University of Stavanger, Norway
  Non-Presenting Author