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Instructional strategies and linguistic features of kindergarten teachers’ shared book reading: The case of Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

He Sun Open the ORCID record for He Sun [Opens in a new window] ,
Weimin Toh  and
Rasmus Steinkrauss
He Sun*
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University
Weimin Toh
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University
Rasmus Steinkrauss
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Teachers’ language practice during shared book reading may significantly affect the rate and outcome of early language proficiency. The current study has focused on 37 kindergarten teachers and 440 4- to 5-year-old kindergartners during their shared book reading sessions in Singapore, exploring teachers’ variation in instructional strategies and linguistic features, and its relations with children’s language development and teacher’s background. Results demonstrated that teacher’s language strategies and linguistic features varied considerably. Instructional strategies with a medium level of cognitive load were found to be positively related to children’s growth in receptive vocabulary and word reading skills. Teacher’s lexical sophistication was found to be positively associated with children’s vocabulary size. Years of teaching experience was revealed to predict teacher’s variation in medium-level instructions.

Keywords

cognitive loadsdistancing modellexical complexityquestioning and commentingshared book readingsyntactic complexityteacher’s qualification
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 427 - 456
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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