Interactive elaborative storytelling fosters vocabulary in pre-schoolers compared to repeated-reading and phonemic awareness interventions

Abstract Early childhood represents a crucial time for ameliorating language difficulties, particularly for children who speak a minority language at home. Previous approaches have focused on teaching vocabulary, often embedded in story reading sessions. We reason that contextualization of interventions influences children’s interest in stories and language, testing a new interactive elaborative storytelling (IES) approach against a repeated-reading and phonemic awareness condition. 293 children, of whom 44.6 % spoke a minority language at home, were randomly assigned (in clusters) to three intervention conditions, conducted over the course of four months. Pre-test and post-test measures tapped receptive and expressive story-vocabulary, receptive and expressive general vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and oral narrative skill. Additionally, we measured story-delivery and children’s behavior during the intervention sessions. Children were more actively involved in the IES and more off-task in the phonemic awareness condition. Story-vocabulary improved most in the IES conditions and phonemic awareness in the phonemic awareness condition. Children with minority home languages profited equally from the interventions. Results are discussed in terms of the challenges and benefits of oral language interventions for children.