The quality of mother–child shared reading: its relations to child’s storytelling and home literacy environment

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we analysed the relations among the quality of mother–child shared reading, child’s storytelling and family literacy environment. The sample included 20 mother–child dyads, with 5-year-old children, who were recorded during shared reading. The quality of shared reading was assessed with the Scale for Observing Shared Reading while children’s storytelling was assessed with the textless book Frog Goes to Dinner. We found that the quality of mother–child shared reading was related to the coherence of children’s stories and to the factors of home literacy environment. Child’s age when parents started reading to him, the number of all books and children’s books in child’s home together explained 43.1% of the variance in the quality of shared reading. The findings give an insight into the process of the quality of the interactive reading between a child and an adult and emphasize the importance of shared reading for child’s storytelling.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality of shared reading
• storytelling
• family literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ljubica Marjanovič - Umek is a full professor at University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology. She is developmental psychologist, researching mainly in the fields of language and cognitive development, theory of mind as well as the quality of early childhood education.

Kaja Hacin is an assistant at University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology. Her main areas of research include cognitive development and theory of mind.

Urška Fekonja is an associate professor at University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology. She is developmental psychologist, researching mainly in the fields of language development and play.

ORCID

Kaja Hacin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5678-1633