The present study investigates the impact of an interactive book reading program on the development of low SES children's oral and written language skills. Participants were 38 4- to 6-year-old Brazilian children. The children assigned to the experimental group underwent a training program of story reading that encouraged the children to play an active role in meaning construction through conversations about the story´s characters and events. The children from the control group were not subjected to any special treatment. The results suggest that interactive book reading programs may have a positive impact on low SES children´s oral language skills. Although the two groups showed similar levels of language development in the beginning of the study, the children in the experimental group performed better than the children in the control group on the measures of story comprehension and vocabulary which were administered after the training program.
Book reading; oral language; written language
