Introduction to the special section on the Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers (ELLECCT)

Abstract

‘Shared book reading’ can be defined as a naturalistic and interactive routine in which an adult and child engage in dialogue and share joint attention on a book (Vogler-Elias, 2013). It is difficult to overstate the benefit of shared book reading interactions for children’s language acquisition and emergent literacy skills. Indeed, First Language has published many studies demonstrating the value of shared book reading in the home (Farrant & Zubrick, 2013; Korat et al., 2013; inter alia), and exploring the factors that influence parents’ language during book reading interactions (including parents’ gender: Duursma, 2016; the child’s own language skills: Schick et al., 2017; book genre: Leech & Rowe, 2014; Nyhout & O’Neill, 2013 the location of new vocabulary on the page, Evans et al., 2011). Importantly, it is not just the book texts themselves that are relevant, but the myriad ways in which parents go beyond what is written on the page. Such ‘extratextual talk’ includes talking about particular words, recasting children’s sentences, and making connections between the text and events in the child’s own life. Research on the characteristics and benefits of shared book reading in the early childhood classroom lags behind research in the home. An obvious question is whether the richness of adult-child book sharing interactions can scale up when the adult is with a group of children or even a whole class, particularly given that children tend to be less engaged when involved with teacher-led group or whole-class