Oral Language and Emergent Literacy Strategies Used by Australian Early Childhood Teachers During Shared Book Reading

Abstract The use of shared book reading is regarded as valuable to support young children build their oral language and emergent literacy skills in preschool classrooms. Quantitative qualitative features early childhood teachers’ (ECTs’) practices are important contributors quality experiences. aim this study was gain in-depth insights about the range frequency extratextual utterances (utterances beyond story text) used by ECTs during with preschoolers well paralinguistic nonverbal features. Video-recordings were made 32 engaging four-year-old class. ECTs’ classified using a validated observational checklist: “Emergent Literacy Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers” (ELLECCT). Results showed frequently responsive statements such commenting on or acknowledging imitating children’s book-related talk. most commonly asked closed questions regularly prosody volume order engage children. In contrast, only limited dialogic prompts explicit vocabulary strategies infrequently expanded utterances. Notably, rarely target print knowledge phonological awareness. Although dialogue reading, targeted techniques that known not consistently demonstrated. These results suggest missed opportunities benefit from reading.