Clinical Discourse and Engagement during Shared Storybook Reading in Preschool Groups

This study investigated the impact of discourse on engagement in shared storybook reading in children who are language impaired and hard to engage. Although active participation in shared storybook reading in children who are typically developing is well defined, research has shown that the engagement of children with language disorders differ as a result of adult reading styles. To investigate the influence of reading style on children who were hard to engage, four shared storybook-reading sessions were analyzed. Within the highly engaged sessions studied, several discourse features were identified that were supportive of the engagement of children with language impairment who were difficult to engage. These features were a balance of requests and responses between clinician and child, use of various scaffolding measures, and a focus on content through the use of pausing, inflection, and volume. The discourse patterns identified were additional to the strategies associated with dialogic book-reading literature focused on active participation.