Impact of interactive reading intervention on narratives skills on children with low socio-economic background

ABSTRACT

Narrative skills are highly predictive of linguistic development as well as future school performances. Yet, children with low socio-economic status (SES) background present specific difficulties for these skills. Interactive reading sessions could have beneficial effects on narrative capacities. We analyze the effects of an IR intervention program on the narratives of children from a low SES, on macrostructural and microstructural parameters. Thirty IR sessions were proposed to 172 children. A control group (N = 87) benefited of the usual activities of class. Narrative skills were measured with the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI) and productions were transcribed via CHILDES. The results did not highlight a significant difference between groups concerning the macrostructural parameters. However microstructural parameters improved significantly in the experimental group as regards lexical, discursive and sentence components.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive reading
• narrative skills
• school intervention
• low socio-economic status
• early childhood

Acknowledgments

We deeply appreciate the participation of all directors, teachers, children and their families who participated in this study. We also thank the assessment work of the master degree students: Marion Bengherbi, Marie-Aude Vessigaud. Appreciation is also extended to Paul Millard for his help its careful review. Above all, we thank Philippe Mousty (†), professor, who started this study with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi_loi/change_lg.pl?language=fr&la=F&table_name=loi&cn=1998063039.

2 https://bestat.statbel.fgov.be/bestat/crosstable.xhtml?view=c1649c18-ea66-4286-9310-2413e74134f8.