Abstract
While numerous studies have examined the development of reading literacy and language skills of older primary and middle school-aged children, comparably little research focuses on those of younger children. The present study investigates the links between early reading literacy – including reading behavior, comprehension, and engagement–and narrative skills among children aged from 3 to 6. Eighty-five children participated in a picture book reading activity and a storytelling task. Their early reading literacy was rated during a child-led picture book reading, and their narrative skills were scored using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. Although the children’s development varied greatly in three early reading literacy sub-dimensions, we found a significant developmental tendency and a correlated relationship between early reading literacy and narrative skills among young children. The preschool children’s reading initially focused on pictures and gradually transferred to print as their age increased. Moreover, their reading behavior, comprehension and engagement had a predictive effect on narrative structure and linguistic development. This study suggests that school-based practices for early reading instruction should focus on children’s reading literacy and narrative skills in the future.
Keywords
Introduction
The importance of early reading or picture book reading experiences for young children’s development cannot be understated. Early reading/picture book reading is an effective means of scaffolding such early language and literacy skills (Dowdall et al., 2020; Milburn et al., 2014; Noble et al., 2019) as vocabulary (Wasik et al., 2016), print knowledge (Mol et al., 2009) and emergent reading and literacy (Horowitz‐Kraus et al., 2017). Without long-term educational support, early reading strategies and skills cannot be greatly developed in childhood (Shu and Li, 2014). Thus, many countries attach great importance to early reading education, both in kindergartens and in families. In China, young children’s reading behaviors, attitudes and skills have been greatly advanced through improved preschool curriculum construction and enhanced social reading promotion (Ding, 2011).
Shared reading, the primary form of early reading, refers to the practice of sharing or reading a picture book with a child. It includes sharing books with preschool children before they have begun reading, and reading books with older children, either individually or in a group (Noble et al., 2019). There is no doubt that shared reading facilitates learning by providing opportunities for the parent/teacher to use questions, expansions and definitions that focus on language, stories, world knowledge and emotional reactions (Saracho, 2017). As a result, it cultivates children’s early reading literacy (ERL), which comprises their reading behavior, emergent comprehension, enjoyment of reading, and so on. Indeed, many studies and meta-analyses have demonstrated that young children with more reading experience show better intrinsic reading literacy performance (e.g. Dooley, 2010; Petscher, 2010).
However, in terms of young children, shared reading mainly refers to developing their early reading behaviors or skills, an ERL sub-dimension, while ignoring their reading engagement or reading orientation. Encouraging a love of early reading can help children become avid readers. Recently, many studies have begun to pay attention to the effects of early reading engagement on children’s language skills. Children’s attitudes towards, interest in and persistence during reading activities are closely related to their extrinsic reading behavior, based on evidence that both cognitive and affective factors are associated with children’s reading skills (e.g. Becker et al., 2010; Logan et al., 2011; McGeown et al., 2015). Engagement and participation in reading activities are associated with young children’s learning performance (Pence, 2007). Unfortunately, there is relatively little research regarding young children’s attitudes towards reading and literacy, despite the assertion that ‘helping children develop a love of reading’ is a primary goal for teachers of beginning readers (Nolen, 2001).
To summarize, reading engagement refers to young children’s performance in terms of their attitude, concentration, interactions with partners, and embodied expression towards early reading in either shared or individual reading activities. Reading engagement is used in this study to describe a child’s level of attention to, interest in and persistence during reading activities. Children’s reading engagement, reading behaviors and reading comprehension constitute the three dimensions of ERL.
It is a grim fact that parents and teachers pay insufficient attention to the cultivation of children’s high reading engagement in social practices promoting early reading in China. In this study, we investigated in depth the specific development of young children’s ERL, including their reading behavior, comprehension and engagement, reflecting the recent emphasis on using an integrated approach to understand young children’s reading activity.
Numerous studies have found that early reading experience is associated with narrative ability (e.g. Grolig et al., 2020; Lever and Senechal, 2011; Zevenbergen et al., 2003). Zevenbergen et al. (2003) found that children who participated in a shared-reading intervention program could express more narrative inferences (internal states and dialog) than could children who did not participate in the program. Similarly, Lever and Senechal (2011) found that an 8-week reading intervention enhanced children’s narrative construction knowledge. Grolig et al. (2020) also demonstrated that a reading intervention with a narrative comprehension focus improved preschoolers’ narrative comprehension, an effect that persisted until the first grade. Both studies showed that early reading fosters narrative skills.
The stories in picture books often follow an episodic narrative structure that includes many story grammar (SG) elements: an initiating event in a setting, which is followed by an internal response and an internal plan, leading to a resolution attempt and a reaction to the outcome of this attempt (Stein and Glenn, 1979). Early reading could also provide exposure to novel sentences and varieties of story structures that may promote young children’s extrinsic narrative language ability (Mol et al., 2009). Young children learn to ‘read’ the pictures in a picture book to ascertain the meanings of narrative components and add these understandings to their narrative schemas (Paris and Paris, 2003). Often, they will utilize suitable vocabularies and sequence events correctly when telling a story (Harkins et al., 1994). Preschool children with well-developed narrative skills are more likely to love to read picture books and to become proficient readers in the future.
Although a correlation between early reading and oral narrative among young children has been recognized, the concrete link between the ERL and narrative skills has not been established, especially after considering children’s reading engagement. This study investigated the relation between ERL and narrative skills and examined whether young children’s ERL predicts their story narrative skills.
Method
Participants
We recruited 85 preschoolers (45 girls, Mage = 57 months, SD = 10.3 months) from a first-grade kindergarten in Shanghai, China. Parental consent was obtained for all participating children. The mean age of children’s mothers was 31 years (SD = 3.1 years). Monthly household income was below 12,000 RMB for 80% of the families.
Observational scale of ERL
Dimension.
Description of the dimension of observational scale of early reading literacy (OSERL).
Data collection
In a quiet environment, each child was asked to read a simple, funny picture book (Rosie’s Walk), placed upside down on the table (part of assessment on awareness of picture book), and then retell this story while reading the pictures again. After telling the story, the child answered some questions about their narrative understanding. The whole process was videotaped so the evaluator could review and score the results later. Three evaluators, all postgraduate students majoring in early childhood education, separately coded the data before the formal scoring to ensure coding consistency, yielding a co-rater consistency coefficient of more than 80%.
The Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument
Dimension.
We used the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005) to assess young children’s narrative macro-structure and micro-language. The story was coded for the information it contained that corresponded to an SG unit. SG units are basic information components that are characteristic of stories and identified as essential to ‘good’ stories by adults and children (Stein and Policastro, 1984). The basic units of the SG model in this study are Setting, Initiating Event (IE), Internal Response (IR), Internal Plan (IP) Attempt, Outcome and Reaction. IE, Attempt and Outcome are the core units. In addition to macro-structural analysis, we used the MLU (mean length of utterance) and MLU5 (mean length of five longest utterances) to represent the children’s micro-language level. Although the integration of MLU and MLU5 is widely accepted as a major indicator of children’s syntactic development level, the MLU5 is a more effective indicator than MLU of syntactic development among young Chinese children (Zhou and Zhang, 2009).
Data collection.
Each child was asked to read and tell a complex airplane story from the ENNI after finished the Rosie’s Walk reading activity. Pointing was not acceptable during the retelling because the listener could not see the pictures. The SG score was determined by observing the video part of the ENNI. Since the story elicited with the ENNI can be analyzed using standard language sampling measures, we further transcribed the ENNI video into language samples in CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts) format, which received extra MLU analysis based on the CLAN (Computerized Language ANalysis) system.
Results
Development of young children’s ERL
A one-way ANOVA on the OSERL data indicating the significant main effect of age. As their age increased, the young children’s total reading literacy score (F (2,82) = 29.91, p < 0.001) and three first-degree dimension scores (Reading Behavior: F (2,82) = 28.95, p < 0.001; Reading Comprehension: F (2,82) =12.41, p < 0.001; Reading Engagement: F (2,82) = 26.84, p < 0.001) significantly improved.
Each specific behavior represents one point, for a total of seven points in every second-degree dimension of Reading Behavior. Figure 1(a) shows a significant difference between the three groups in the dimensions of picture book awareness (F (2, 82) = 19.42, p < 0.001) and picture reading (F (2, 82) = 5.13, p < 0.01). Specifically, 3- to 4-year-old children showed lower performance on basic awareness of both books (M = 3.37, SD = 1.329) and pictures (M = 3.53, SD = 1.072) than did other age groups. Furthermore, children showed poorer awareness of print of Chinese characters than of other dimensions (paired-sample t-test, ps < 0.001), with no differences among the three age groups (F (2, 82) = 1.26, p > 0.05).
Converting the Reading Comprehension and Reading Engagement scores into general 4-point scales showed that young children varied in their second-degree dimensions (see Figure 1(b)). The children showed relatively better reading engagement performance than reading comprehension performance (t = 11.84, p < 0.001). In addition, except for the second-degree dimension of interest (F (2, 82) = 0.43, p > 0.05), the three groups showed significant differences in all sub-dimensions of reading engagement (F interaction (2, 82) = 17.71, p < 0.001; F embodied expression (2, 82) = 11.89, p < 0.001;
F persistence (2, 82) = 16.11, p < 0.001) and all the sub-dimensions of reading comprehension (F episode (2, 82) = 6.01, p < 0.001; F construction (2, 82) = 25.81, p < 0.0001; F language (2, 82) = 16.31, p < 0.001). Specifically, compared with other groups, the 3- to 4-year-olds’ performance was significantly worse in the dimensions of constructing an integrated story (p < 0.05) and using precise language (p < 0.05). Young children’s development of reading behavior (a), and reading comprehension and engagement (b).
Children’s distribution of the developmental level of reading comprehension and reading engagement (%).
Development of young children’s narrative skills
Descriptive statistics and multiple comparisons of young children’s narrative skills.
The relationship between ERL and narrative skills
Pearson correlation between early reading literacy and narrative skills.
*ERL: early reading literacy; SG: story grammar; MLU: mean length of utterance; MLU5: mean length of five longest utterances.
A large body of studies has shown that young children with more reading experience have better narrative skills. We used path analysis to estimate ERL’s predictive effect on the development of SG and MLU5 (see Figure 2) RMR = 0.028; RMSEA = 0.042; CFI = 0.913). Reading behavior, comprehension and engagement explained 53% and 56% of the variance in SG and MLU5, respectively. Reading engagement was directly and significantly predictive of SG (β =.28, p < 0.01) and MLU5 (β =.30, p < 0.01). The predictive effect of early reading literacy (ERL) on the development of story grammar (SG) and mean length of five longest utterances (MLU5).
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to discover the relation between young children’s ERL and narrative skills. To that end, we described the development of ERL and narrative structure and language use among 3- to 6-year-old children. Moreover, we explored the predictive effect of ERL on core narrative skills.
The different ERL dimensions assessed by the OSERL showed a gaping but developing trend among the young children. Specifically, their reading behavior, comprehension and engagement performance greatly improved in the key period for reading development. The significant finding here is that, after receiving formal and informal picture book reading education, the young children cultivated an awareness of books, established good reading habits and learned how to understand a story from books. Thus, school-based early reading practices should continue developing children’s ERL, especially among children who lack reading experience.
We concluded that children had a poorer reading awareness of print or Chinese characters than pictures, in line with the picture-to-print developmental path hypothesis (e.g. Liu, 2011; Yang, 2011). The preschool children’s focus was on picture reading initially and gradually transferred to print reading as their age increased. Their reading comprehension ability also developed quickly by ages 5 to 6. Their storytelling narrative possessed the core SG units required of a ‘good’ story, namely a beginning, development and a result (Sulzby, 1985). These findings suggest that, at the beginning of formal print reading, teaching should follow the rules for children’s early reading development.
Moreover, this study found that the children’s reading engagement was significantly correlated with their reading behavior and comprehension, making it an important dimension for evaluating children’s ERL. One important finding was that the children showed better reading engagement performance than reading comprehension performance. That is to say, children of different ages were all interested in reading and showed a good interaction and persistence level. Other studies have shown direct links between reading interest and literacy outcomes (e.g. Scarborough and Dobrich, 1994; Serpell et al., 2005). Parents’ interactions with children during early reading are very important, and dialogical and interactive strategies can promote reading activity (e.g. Bojczyk et al., 2016; Duursma, 2016).
Except for reading literacy, narrative skills (narrative structure and language use) showed a developmental trend among children aged 3 to 6. When evaluating narration, one concern is whether the child is telling a story that is understandable to the listener. Only a story with core structure and exact language is a ‘good’ story and easy to understand. The good news was that the 5- and 6-year-old children in our study had mastered the core units of story structure grammar and long MLU. However, the children could not easily tell the inner state of story characters because their accuracy in the IR and IP units was significantly lower than in other units. Previous studies also suggest that narrative structure units describing inner thoughts are rarely mentioned during childhood (Hughes et al., 1997). We should develop children’s ability to pay attention to the inner changes of a story’s characters.
Lastly, we found ERL had a significant predictive effect on narrative skills. Importantly, high reading engagement could contribute to the integrity of the children’s storytelling structure and the exactness of their language. As affective aspects of reading have been shown to influence reading skills (e.g. Becker et al., 2010; Morgan and Fuchs, 2007), promoting comprehension of and engagement in reading are arguably effective means of turning a child into an active reader. Parents and teachers must target reading engagement and motivation to help poor readers develop good literacy.
The present study concluded a developmental tendency and a correlated relationship between ERL and narrative skills among young children. Furthermore, the degree of reading literacy developed varied greatly in different dimensions and subsequently affected their narrative skills. Teachers involved in early reading instruction must be aware of the relations emerging between these dimensions. However, the small sample size may affect the findings’ accuracy; a larger study involving children in different regions is needed.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors thank all families for their participation.