Dialogic Reading for Comprehension: effects on children's story retelling - a case report

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated if Dialogic Reading for Comprehension can help children improve their retelling skills. Earlier studies suggest that Dialogic Reading promotes the inclusion of psychological story elements, but has little effect on the organization of plot sequences. Dialogic Reading for Comprehension is a development of Dialogic Reading aimed at comprehension. It uses scaffolding based on (a) structure of story events and (b), the meaning of story events (narrative functions). A single subject design was used across participants for two of the children and an adapted alternating treatment design for the other two, with follow-up. Four children participated in four conditions: baseline, Dialogic Reading for Comprehension with scaffolding about narrative functions, Dialogic Reading for Comprehension with scaffolding about narrative events, and Dialogic Reading for Comprehension, a combination of both. At the baseline, the children were not including the minimum elements to create a coherent storyline and this skill was established with the intervention. Plot sequence and organization improved the most in the combined condition. Narrative enrichment was not affected. Thus, it is discussed that Dialogic Reading for Comprehension can help children organize plot sequence and coherence. The superiority of the combined condition may reflect an underlying interdependence between the psychological and action-related components of narratives.

Keywords:
Narration; Child Language; Language Development; Reading