Page 21 - The Inquiry into the Development and Implementation of a Multimedia Resource to Help Improve Parental Involvement in Their Child’s Reading Literacy During the Primary School Years.

Another method used to improve vocabulary retention can be seen in the study
carried out by Hargrave & Sénéchal (2000). This study examined the effects of

storybook reading, and focused on the vocabulary attainment of 36 preschool
children who had poor expressive vocabulary skills, averaging 13 months behind

their chronological age. The authors tested whether the vocabulary acquisition would

be greater when children were taught using dialogic-reading or standard storybook
reading. Dialogic-reading (Whitehurst, 1992) differs from standard storybook

reading in that it promotes open dialogue with the pupils, where the teacher becomes
more of a listener and the pupils the storyteller. The results of this study revealed

that children in the dialogic-reading lessons made significantly larger gains in

vocabulary as well as gains on a standardised expressive vocabulary test, in
comparison to the children in the standard storytelling lessons. Mehigan (2009)

suggests that learning a language is fundamentally dependent on vocabulary,
understanding words and their meanings. He also states that there is a strong

association between vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension, the third component of reading, is the process of

constructing meaning from a text or a mental representation of textual information
and then interpreting it (Van Keer, 2004). There are a number of strategies that can

be introduced and taught while reading with a child. Over time, the child aims to
develop a range of strategies which they can independently draw on whilst reading.

Some of these strategies include summarising, sequencing, inferencing, comparing

and contrasting, drawing conclusions and self-questioning. As stated by Beck
(2001), when reading with a child it is important for the parent and teacher to have

an awareness of the distinction between constructing meaning of ideas in a text and
simply retrieving information from the text. The parent should ask questions that

encourage their child to talk about the text and connect ideas to their own lives,

similar to the previously discussed dialogic-reading method. Beck (2001)
recommends keeping important ideas relating to the text in focus while assisting the

child in articulating their response to help them construct meaning. Once the child
has a clear understanding of phonological awareness, a developed and rich

vocabulary and is able to independently draw upon a series of reading

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