An investigation of a hearing mother's reading aloud efforts to her preschool age hearing and hearing impaired children before bedtime

Abstract

This study investigated a hearing mother's reading aloud to her preschool age hearing and hearing impaired children in a group situa- tion before bed time. In order to describe the natural accurrence of the bed time reading aloud episodes in this particular family, met- hods were employed that would capture both verbal and non-verbal behavior. Those methods included naturalistic observations, fieldno- tes, formal and informal interviews with the parents and children, recording literacy materials used in the family, and videotaping actual reading aloud sessions. Microethnographic analytic techniques were used in data analysis of these videotaped interactions. This methodology allows one to capture ongoing communication in a natura- listic environment and then to systematically analyze it. Analysis of selected segments of videotaped data revealed that six different mediating episodes were created by the mother with her children. In the course of the study, Mrs. Smith read two different types of book to the children: stories and picture books. The first three episodes consisted of her reading the same pic- ture books using different styles. In Episode 1, both Mrs. Smith and the children initiated a new topic by directing wh-questions to the other partners. In Episode 2, Mrs. Smith introduced three different pretend plays in which she helped her children to build scripts about cooking, eating and shopping. Althought it was a pretend play, the ''eating'' play sequence appeared to be in a form of pointing out a picture and pretending to eat, a subtle variation of Episode 1. During Episode 3, Mrs. Smith provided definitions of the objects in order for Adam to locate the picture. Thus, Episode 1, Episode 2 the ''eating'' play sequence and Episode 3 consisted of a ''labeling'' style interaction. Mrs. Smith's purposes for these episodes were to help her children, especially Adam (the hearing impaired child), to expand their word knowledge and to learn school conversation. The Episode 2 ''cookie making'' and ''shopping'' sequences served to help her children expand their world knowledge, whereas, her main purpose for creating pretend play was to expand her children's background knowledge for cooking and shopping.