home storybook reading in primary or secondary language with preschool children, evidence for equal...

103Reading Research Quarterly • 43(2) • pp. 103–130 • dx.doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.43.2.1 • © 2008 International Reading Association

A B S T R A C T

Home Storybook Reading in Primary or Second Language With PreschoolChildren: Evidence of Equal Effectivenessfor Second-Language VocabularyAcquisitionTheresa A. RobertsCalifornia State University, Sacramento, USA

Storybook reading is one of the most frequently rec-ommended practices for building preschool chil-dren’s early language and literacy competencies

(International Reading Association & NationalAssociation for the Education of Young Children, 1998;Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Teale, 1984). One reasonthat reading aloud to children is effective is that it pro-motes vocabulary acquisition, which is linked to chil-dren’s conceptual knowledge (Elley, 1989; Pemberton& Watkins, 1987; Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Sénéchal &Cornell, 1993; Whitehurst et al., 1988). The use of in-teractive and analytic talk with children during bookreading enhances language and vocabulary development

in English-only children (Dickinson & Smith, 1994).Effective interactive practices include questioning(Sénéchal, Thomas, & Monker, 1995), expanding re-sponses (Pemberton & Watkins, 1987; Valdez-Menchaca& Whitehurst, 1992), explanation of vocabulary (Elley,1989), and both verbal and nonverbal responding(Sénéchal et al., 1995).

Other studies have shown that teaching family care-givers and day-care providers how to implement high-quality storybook reading has beneficial effects onlanguage development (Arnold, Lonigan, Whitehurst, &Epstein, 1994; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992;Whitehurst et al., 1988). Interventions that combine

This study examined how providing either primary- or English-language storybooks for home reading followed byclassroom storybook reading and vocabulary instruction in English influenced English vocabulary acquisition. Participantsin the study were preschool children (N = 33), from low socioeconomic status families, whose primary language waseither Hmong or Spanish. There were two 6-week sessions of home combined with classroom storybook reading. Childrenwere randomized to either a primary- or English-language home storybook-reading treatment in the first session. In thesecond session, children switched treatment and participated in home storybook reading with books written in thealternate language. Children learned a substantial number of words from the combined home and classroom storybook-reading experiences. Home storybook reading in a primary language was at least as effective as home storybook readingin English for English vocabulary learning. Significant gains in vocabulary recognition were documented after homereading and again after classroom experiences in English. Family-caregiver participation in the parent-support part ofthe program rose from 50% to 80% between the two 6-week sessions. Family caregivers’ English oral-language skillsand the number of English-language children’s books in the home were related to English vocabulary learning. Discussionfocuses on the viability of combining primary- or second-language home storybook reading with second-languageclassroom storybook reading as a means to enhance second-language vocabulary learning.

A B S T R A C T

high-quality storybook reading on the part of family care-givers with classroom storybook reading have had addi-tive effects (Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998; Whitehurst,Arnold, et al., 1994). The term family caregivers refers toparents, extended-family members, or others who haveprimary responsibility for the child. Research has alsoshown that repeated readings of stories were beneficialfor children, with 4% of target words learned from sin-gle readings and 10% to 15% more target words learnedfrom multiple readings (Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002;Eller, Pappas, & Brown, 1988; Elley, 1989; Leung &Pikulski, 1990; Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002;Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Sénéchal, 1997; Sénéchal &Cornell, 1993; Sénéchal et al., 1995). The defining fea-tures of high-quality storybook reading are elaboratingand expanding children’s responses; sharing and main-taining the child’s focus and positive emotional experi-ence; and engaging in naming, questioning, labeling, andother activities designed to enhance the child’s under-standing of the story and to model more sophisticatedlanguage use.

Results from storybook-reading studies in whichchildren attended preschool programs in their first lan-guage or home reading occurred in their first languageform the bedrock of evidence for the effectiveness of sto-rybook reading (e.g., Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini,1995; Teale, 2003). There have been few studies in class-rooms or homes of either second- or primary-languagestorybook reading with children who are English-language learners (García, 2000). The term English-language learner refers to children who are in the processof acquiring both the language primarily used in theirhome-language interactions and English.

Scholars have raised concerns about the suitabilityand effectiveness of second-language storybook readingand other vocabulary-development activities for noviceEnglish-language learners of preschool age (García, 2000).Other scholars have proposed that the level of second-language proficiency is a critical limiting condition forsecond-language learning (Snow et al., 1998). This per-spective is based on extensive evidence of correlations be-tween measures of English oral proficiency and a varietyof second-language indexes (Genesee, Lindholm-Leary,Saunders, & Christian, 2006). However, previous re-search has not empirically demonstrated nor theoretical-ly defined the level of second-language proficiencynecessary for successful second-language learning at dif-ferent levels of development or on different tasks. At leastone recent experimental study has demonstrated thatpreschool English-language learners can acquire second-language (English) storybook vocabulary from interactivestorybook reading coupled with focused vocabulary in-struction in English-language preschool settings (e.g.,

Roberts & Neal, 2004). An important component of orallanguage proficiency that mediates vocabulary learning inboth first and second language is initial vocabularyknowledge (Fitzgerald, 1995; Scarborough, 2001).Studies that have focused on vocabulary learning withEnglish-only children typically have found that childrenwho begin with larger vocabularies learn more wordsthan children who know fewer words (Hart & Risley,1995; Penno et al., 2002; Stanovich, 1986). Little isknown, however, about the relationship between initialvocabulary size and the growth of preschool English-language learners’ vocabularies during storybook read-ing. Research examining this relationship is needed.

Older and more recent position statements and learn-ing guidelines frequently identify the importance of chil-dren’s primary language for school learning (CaliforniaDepartment of Education, 2007; National Association forthe Education of Young Children, 1996). However, thereis little empirical evidence on what may be effective spe-cific instructional practices for orchestrating the interplaybetween first and second language. Given the reality thatmany preschool English-language learners are in English-language classrooms through either circumstance or pol-icy, the upshot of this limited empirical evidence is thatfirst language often plays only an informal or limited rolein preschool programs. Research on specific, effectiveways to integrate first and second languages during storybook reading could advance our theoretical under-standing of first- and second-language vocabulary devel-opment in addition to informing policy and guidingpractice with more precision. The major purpose of thepresent study was to examine how both primary-language (L1) and second-language (L2) home storybookreading influenced second-language (English) vocabularydevelopment when combined with English-language sto-rybook reading in classroom settings.

The study was guided by a theoretical frameworkdeveloped for this study suggesting that home storybook-reading experiences followed by classroom English-language storybook reading and vocabulary instructionon the same books could constitute an effective model forfostering the vocabulary acquisition of preschool English-language learners. This framework has the virtue of beingresponsive to the language characteristics and affor-dances of both homes and classrooms. Typically, pre-school English-language learners from low-incomefamilies in the United States are dominant in their homelanguage yet attend preschool programs where Englishis the principal language of instruction (Tabors & Snow,2001). The conditions under which English-languagelearners may experience positive language outcomesfrom storybook reading in these second-language con-texts are important to identify.

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By implementing this sequential vocabulary-development model, I examined two expectations relatedto preschool English-language learners’ vocabulary ac-quisition from storybook reading. One expectation wasthat primary-language storybook reading at home couldsupport English vocabulary acquisition from storybookreading in preschool classrooms when the shared bookreading in each setting was based on conditions for vo-cabulary acquisition shown to be effective by previous re-search. A second expectation was that there would beno detrimental effect on English vocabulary acquisitionas a result of children participating in a mixture of primary-and second-language storybook reading. I consideredEnglish oral proficiency, general English vocabularyknowledge, and initial level of story-specific vocabularyas potential mediators of vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading. I also explored how family languageand literacy characteristics and literacy resources in thehome shaped English vocabulary learning.

Theoretical Framework for the Proposed ModelPrimary-Language Storybook ReadingA theoretical analysis of word learning and L1 to L2 re-lationships in word learning suggests there are threemain reasons to expect that primary-language storybookreading may contribute to second-language word learn-ing. First, reading storybooks in the primary languagemay help children access storybook meaning because ofchildren’s greater ability to process and derive meaningfrom the lexical, syntactic, and phonological structures ofthe primary language. This greater richness of text-basedmeanings should also promote the ability to link this newinformation with prior knowledge. Theoretical accountsof how vocabulary is learned from storybook readingsuggest that the degree to which children can link infor-mation in text with prior knowledge may be important(Nagy & Herman, 1987). The formation of these linkagesis dependent on a number of factors including breadthand depth of children’s knowledge base (Nagy &Herman, 1987), phonological skills (de Jong & Olson,2004; Rosenthal & Ehri, in press), syntax knowledge(Cain, Oakhill, & Elbro, 2003), lexical search processes(Masoura & Gathercole, 2005), and the ability to devel-op new semantic representations (Li, Zhao, &MacWhinney, 2007). Prior knowledge becomes incorpo-rated into language, and thus, children’s vocabularyknowledge reflects how much they know about theirworlds. It is plausible, therefore, to expect that primary-language storybook reading will foster cognitive develop-

ment, particularly of the conceptual and linguistic mean-ings embedded in stories. However, it is less clear to whatextent conceptual and linguistic knowledge derived fromexperience with particular storybooks would benefitbroader vocabulary development. To examine this rela-tionship, measures of specific storybook vocabulary andmore general vocabulary development were included inthe present study.

A second theoretical reason why primary-languagestorybook reading may support second-language vocab-ulary learning involves individual word learning. Theability to understand more of what is read (described pre-viously) would result in greater contextual support for in-ferring new meanings of individual words from linguisticcontext, thereby producing lexical expansion. For ex-ample, if a child understands the language in DonFreeman’s Corduroy, which portrays Corduroy, a teddybear, and Lisa as “friends,” then this understandingwould support the child’s attempts to infer the meaningof the word hugged when the storybook language de-scribes how Lisa hugged Corduroy. Greater familiaritywith primary-language syntax and phonology would alsosupport the lexicalization of primary-language words.Thus, with primary-language storybook reading, chil-dren might acquire the meanings of more words and es-tablish stronger lexical representations of those wordsthan would occur with second-language reading. In addi-tion, preschool L1 vocabulary size has consistently beenshown to predict kindergarten and subsequent readingskills (Scarborough, 2001). Moreover, there is evidencethat primary-language word knowledge transfers to a sec-ond language (although this occurs more frequently atlater phases of language acquisition; Kan & Kohnert,2005) and can serve as a foundation for second-languageword learning, further strengthening the idea that primary-language storybook reading could support vocabularydevelopment in English (Bialystok & Hakuta, 1999;Cunningham & Graham, 2000; Jiménez, García, &Pearson, 1996). From this perspective, primary-languagestorybook reading would be expected to have a greatereffect on text-specific word learning than overall vocab-ulary knowledge.

A third theoretical explanation for the potential ben-efits of primary-language storybook reading derives fromthe sociolinguistic opportunities that arise from readingstorybooks in primary language. Interaction with adultsduring storybook reading that (a) promotes children’slanguage expansions and production and (b) initiatesconceptual expansion through practices such as askingquestions and helping children to connect story contentwith previous experiences has been associated with thestrongest gains in vocabulary (Dickinson & Smith, 1994;Pemberton & Watkins, 1987; Sénéchal et al., 1995;

Home Storybook Reading in Primary or Second Language With Preschool Children 105

Whitehurst et al., 1988). The studies discussed previous-ly showed that teaching family caregivers how to usethese interactive strategies with their own children wasparticularly effective for language enhancement. The so-ciolinguistic opportunities that arise when children readstories at home in their primary language with familycaregivers who are also fluent in that language shouldfoster further primary-language vocabulary acquisition.These are opportunities not only for conceptual expan-sion in both breadth and depth of meaning from lexicalto discourse levels but also for connecting text materialwith individual, familial, and cultural knowledge. High-quality storybook reading has the potential to afford fam-ily caregivers the opportunity to incorporate the richnessof their familial, cultural, and linguistic practices intobook reading (Bernhard et al., 2006). This theoreticalpossibility suggests more strongly than the lexical-expansion explanation that primary-language storybookreading might confer advantages for both storybook-related vocabulary learning and, as the interaction be-tween adults and children expands beyond the content ofthe storybooks, for the acquisition of vocabulary less di-rectly connected to the storybook reading itself.

Primary-language storybook reading could thenserve to promote additive bilingualism where bothEnglish-language acquisition and the preservation of theprimary language were supported and valued(Cummins, 1999, 2000). It is widely acknowledged thatprimary-language maintenance and literacy are associ-ated with older children’s success in English literacy(August & Hakuta, 1997; Cummins, 1999; Genesee etal., 2006). This study expands consideration of the in-fluence of primary language on second-language literacyto preschool children.

By providing opportunities to engage with decon-textualized language, home storybook reading may be es-pecially beneficial to English-language learners’vocabulary development. Decontextualized languagerefers to language that is removed from present experi-ence and from immediate contextual and concrete sup-port. For example, decontextualized language would beused to discuss yesterday’s events or to describe the lifecycle of a frog to a child who has neither observed thiscycle directly nor seen it represented in pictures. By en-couraging children to rely more on linguistic informationalone, decontextualized language strengthens their abili-ty to master language and to employ it as a source ofknowledge acquisition and conceptual development. Inaddition, skill with decontextualized language has a verysignificant effect on academic learning (Dickinson &Snow, 1987; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, &Christian, 2005; Olson, 1977; Snow, 1991), and expo-

sure to this type of language has been found to differen-tiate children’s home environments (DeTemple, 2001).

A vexing problem repeatedly found in studies of first-language vocabulary learning is that early differences inEnglish-only children’s vocabulary knowledge tend to in-crease over time and with more instruction and story-book reading (e.g., Penno et al., 2002). An importantdifference between English-language learners andEnglish-only children with low English vocabularies isthat English-language learners also have linguistic re-sources from their first language. Forty to 70% of wordsthat are known by preschool English-language learners inL1 are different from those known in L2. In spite of thesechildren’s low English vocabulary, their composite vo-cabulary (L1 plus L2) typically equals the vocabulary sizeof English-only children who are similar in age(Marchman & Martínez-Sussman, 2002; Peña, Bedore,& Zlatic-Giunta, 2002). Consequently, overall Englishvocabulary size may have a different influence on Englishvocabulary learning for English-language learners thanthat found for English-only children. The relative influ-ence of general initial second-language vocabulary size(English) on second-language vocabulary learning is in-cluded with English oral proficiency and story-specificvocabulary knowledge as a potential mediator of vocabu-lary learning in this study.

Combining and Switching Between L1 and L2The research evidence has shown convincingly that theuse of the primary language for academic instruction andliteracy with older children does not interfere with second-language acquisition and likely benefits it whenchildren are in high-quality English-language programsof sufficient duration (Corson, 1999; Cummins, 2000;Genesee et al., 2006). In addition, studies of mixed-language processing of individual words demonstrated atrend toward a smaller “switch cost” when switching be-tween L1 and L2 for younger children, although theyoungest participants in these studies were 5 years ofage (Kohnert & Bates, 2002). In spite of this evidence,educators and policymakers continue to be concernedthat combining primary- and English-language story-book reading may hinder English-language acquisition orresult in an intermixing of the two languages such thatlanguage development is impeded (e.g., Genesee et al.,2006; Rueda & Garcia, 1996). In general, studies on oral-language acquisition with young children have shownthat children’s L1 and L2 are discretely represented butare unified in one underlying language-representationsystem. Language switching is typically strategic and notassociated with linguistic consequences for L2 (Gass &


Selinker, 2001). However, there has been very limitedstudy of English-language learners’ vocabulary acquisi-tion as it develops in response to language experiencessuch as storybook reading that contribute to learners’abilities to use the decontextualized language that under-pins academic learning.

The present study tested the effects of moving be-tween primary language and English on vocabularylearning in two different ways. The first way that the ef-fects of language mixing were calibrated was by havingthe children and their family caregivers switch from read-ing storybooks in either their primary language orEnglish first to then reading storybooks in the alternatelanguage. The second way involved comparing children’svocabulary learning when home storybook reading inEnglish was followed by classroom reading of the samebooks in English with children’s vocabulary learningwhen home storybook reading in the primary languagewas followed by classroom reading of the same books inEnglish. It was expected that children would experienceno adverse effects on vocabulary learning by switchingfrom storybooks written in one language to those writ-ten in another or from having storybooks at home in onelanguage and classroom reading in another.

Method

ParticipantsParticipants were 44 preschool children, from low-socioeconomic status families, who were enrolled in oneof two morning classes or one of two afternoon classesin a state-funded preschool located in Sacramento,California, USA. Primary languages of the children wereHmong (48%), Spanish (32%), and English (20%). Dataare reported for 33 of the original 35 children whose pri-mary language was Spanish or Hmong. (One child re-turned to Mexico before final testing; another attendedpreschool for less than half of the study’s duration.) Ofthese 33, 17 children were female and 16 were male.Twenty children spoke Hmong as their primary languageand 13 spoke Spanish. The mean age of participatingchildren in months was M = 52.13 (SD = 3.65). The 9English-only children participated in the regular pre-school program and engaged in home storybook-reading activities using English-language storybooks, butdata for these children are not reported in this study. Allparticipants had been screened by the school nurse forhearing difficulties down to 25 decibels. All participantsreceived free breakfast and lunch and lived in a low-income community that was relatively homogenous.

Two classes each of 11 children attended the morn-ing program, and two classes each of 11 children attend-ed the afternoon program. The two morning andafternoon classes shared the same space and were mixedduring all activities. Both the morning and afternoon ses-sions had the same teachers and assistant teachers. Thestate-funded preschool was located in a portable buildingon an elementary school campus. One of the two certi-fied teachers was monolingual English speaking; the oth-er was an English-dominant, English–Spanish bilingual.One assistant teacher was a Spanish-dominant,Spanish–English bilingual; the other was a monolingualEnglish speaker. There were no Hmong bilingual staff.All instructional materials, activities (circle time, singing),and management of routines were in English. The class-room program emphasized social development and re-lied on a traditional preschool curriculum. Each day,children participated in circle time and large-motor out-door play; they also had the opportunity to engage in cut-and-paste art projects and to play in the kitchen center orwith blocks. Writing, reading, science, and math centerswere not available on a regular basis. Prior to the intro-duction of the experimental vocabulary program, story-book reading involved reading from a book, whichaccompanied a literacy computer program, two to threetimes a week. Children also practiced naming letters andlistened to short stories where the words appeared oneat a time on the computer screen.

MeasuresPretest and Posttest Overall Storybook-Vocabulary TasksPictures illustrating six key vocabulary words (related tomain episodes or characters) were selected from each ofsix books that were used during each of two six-week ex-perimental storybook-reading sessions. Words were se-lected based on the research team’s judgment that manyof them would be unknown to participating children;however, some easier words were also included to pro-mote task engagement. The 36 total word pictures,which measured 3" � 3", were divided into nine groupsof four words. Each group of four pictures was arrayedon a 6" � 14" card. Children were asked to point to thepicture on each card that showed the item named by theresearcher. Targets on one trial were foils on subsequenttrials. This way, children could not respond correctlysimply by selecting pictures that they had seen previ-ously during storybook reading. The position of the tar-get item was randomized across cards, and no cardcontained more than one picture from each storybook. Inaddition, no words with the same initial consonant were


included on the same card. The set of nine cards wasgone through four times until every pictured vocabularyitem had been named by the researcher. There were twosets of nine cards for a total of 72 word pictures. One settested words for books 1–6, the other for books 7–12(see Appendix A for a list of the two sets of vocabularytest items). For the set of vocabulary items taken frombooks 1–6, a test–retest reliability of .98 on a sample of25 children with tests separated by six to eight weeks wasobtained. Guttman split-half reliability was calculated us-ing an equal number of randomly drawn samples fromeach treatment group (n = 22) at the initial testing andwas .92. Scores ranged from 0–36.

Weekly Vocabulary TestsEach week children were tested on the six words for (a)the next book that they would be taking home (before at-home reading score), (b) the book that they had had athome the previous week (after at-home reading score)and (c) the book that they had just received classroom in-struction on in English (after in-class reading score).Target words on this task were the same as those on thepretest-posttest vocabulary measure. This task was need-ed to permit separate tracking of the effects of the home-reading component of the program and the effects ofclassroom instruction. The six word illustrations (3" �3") for each book were arrayed on a sheet of 12" � 14"construction paper. Each vocabulary item was spoken bythe researcher in a randomized order, and the childpointed to the picture of the spoken word. Vocabularyscores for each book before at-home reading, after at-home reading, and after in-class reading ranged from 0–6for a total of 18 items on each of the weekly vocabularytests.

Peabody Picture Vocabulary TestOn the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III;1997), children pointed to one of four word illustrationson a page after the researcher spoke the target vocabularyitem. Words were presented in 12-word sets. A ceilingwas reached when 8 or more items were missed in a 12-item set. This was a standardized test with a nationalnorming sample. The technical data included in the ex-aminer’s manual indicated that there were 700 childrenin the 2- to 5-year-old norming sample with 21.4%African American children, 13.4% Hispanic, 60.6%white, and 4.6% from other groups (Dunn & Dunn,1997). These percentages reflected national demograph-ics at the time of test construction. A test–retest reliabili-ty of .92 was reported for 3- to 4-year-old children andtest–retest reliabilities of .87 and .89 and alpha reliabili-ties of .94 to .95 were reported for children ages 4–5

(Dunn & Dunn, 1997). Alternate forms were used for thefirst, second, and third testing. This measure was includ-ed both to determine breadth of vocabulary learning andto afford comparison of the present sample with thoseof other studies that have used the same standardizedmeasure. Scores can range from 0–177.

Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes PeabodyThe Spanish Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody(TVIP-H; 1986) is structured and administered in thesame manner as the English Peabody Picture VocabularyTest-Revised (PPVT-R) with words tested in blocks of 12.The 125 vocabulary items on the test were translatedfrom the PPVT-R using what were the most equivalentitems in the Spanish language. Most of the Spanish TVIP-H items were different from the items on theEnglish PPVT-III; only 2 of the first 48 items on these twotests were the same. The norming sample reported inthe examiner’s manual included monolingual Spanish-speaking children from México City, Mexico (n = 1,219),and San Juan, Puerto Rico (n = 1,488; Dunn, Padilla,Lugo, & Dunn, 1986). According to the manual, internalconsistency reliability based on the Spearman-Brown for-mula was .94 for 4-year-old children (Dunn et al., 1986).Scores can range from 0–125.

Preschool IDEA Oral Language Proficiency TestOn the Preschool IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test(Pre-IPT: English; 1988), children responded to ques-tions and pointed to appropriate items in a picture con-structed of individual objects on a board. This test isgrounded in the view that oral proficiency is demonstrat-ed by a child’s ability to understand and communicateeffectively in English. This is one of two commonly usedtests for assessing preschool English oral proficiency inthe state of California. The scene used in the test depictsa birthday party in the park. Children’s understanding ofsimple vocabulary items (boy, girl, table, mother, cat, cake)and their ability to give their name and age whenprompted are tested at the earliest levels of proficiency(levels A and B). Levels D and E require the child to re-spond correctly to lengthier and more syntactically com-plex questions with more difficult vocabulary (presents,balloon, shirt). The most difficult level-E (fully Englishproficient) item asks the child to construct and tell ashort narrative about going to a party. The test meas-ures vocabulary, syntax, discourse, and pragmatics tosome degree. Children are assigned a level from A–Ebased on performance scores that range from 0–42. LevelA is non-English speaking (score of less than 5 out of10). Levels B (score of 5–7 out of 10) and C (score of


15–17 out of 20) are limited English speaking, and levelsD (score of 26–28 out of 31) and E (score of 37–42 outof 42) indicate fluent English proficiency. These levelswere changed to a 1–5 scale for data analysis. The norm-ing sample included children whose primary languageswere Spanish (53%), English (26%), and Hmong (3%);the primary languages of the remaining children (18%)were Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, among others. ThePre-IPT technical data included in the technical manualindicated a test–retest reliability of .77. Schrank,Fletcher, and Alvarado (1996) reported concurrent cor-relations between this test and teachers’ estimates of lan-guage proficiency and between the Pre-IPT and theWoodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised of .71and .91, respectively.

Family-Caregiver Book SelectionAfter each six-week session of storybook reading, care-givers and children chose two books to keep. All six ti-tles used in that session were displayed on tables in allthree languages (Hmong, Spanish, English), and care-givers were invited to choose the books that they want-ed with their children. Title and language selectionswere recorded.

Caregiver Language and Literacy SurveysTwo surveys containing simple and concrete questionswere designed to elicit information about the primary-and second-language characteristics of children’s fami-lies, the primary- and second-language resources in chil-dren’s homes, and the family caregivers’ participation inthe storybook-reading program. One survey was con-ducted after the first session (books 1–6) of the program,and the other was administered after the program wascompleted. The surveys probed (a) the family caregivers’oral language, reading, and writing competencies inEnglish and their primary language (survey 1); (b) thenumber and type of adult literacy materials and chil-dren’s books in the home, both in the family’s primarylanguage and in English (survey 1); (c) the frequency ofstorybook reading (surveys 1 and 2); and (d) the ambientfamily language as estimated by the number of individu-als who did and did not speak English (surveys 1 and2). These characteristics have been shown to influencechildren’s vocabulary development (Burgess, 2005; Snowet al., 1998; Wells, 1985). By using these relatively sim-ple questions, I was able to minimize the difficulties asso-ciated with ascertaining the equivalence and meaning ofresponses across two language and cultural groups offamily caregivers who self-reported low levels of Englishproficiency. Family caregivers’ views regarding bothEnglish acquisition and primary-language maintenance,

as well as the book-reading program, were also probedon survey 2 (see Appendix B).

Parents of children in the preschool program, whohad been trained in survey administration, administeredthe surveys in Hmong and Spanish outside of the class-room setting. I reasoned that having community mem-bers of the same language and cultural groups conductthe surveys would increase the family caregivers’ com-fort and candor, as well as the elaborateness of their ver-bal responses. The surveys were conducted outside ofclass so that the caregivers might feel less constrained byclassroom expectations and freer to respond to the surveyquestions. Data were also collected on letter knowledge,concepts of print, story-event sequencing, storytelling inEnglish and primary language, and comprehension;however, these are not considered here. Survey questionsdesigned to elicit views on primary language and Englishalso are not reported.

MaterialsHmong- and Spanish-language versions of 12 classicchildren’s storybooks were developed. Storybooks with asequential narrative structure were selected. (SeeAppendix C for a list of books 1–6 and books 7–12,which were used in the first and second sessions, respec-tively.) The content of these books was not necessarilyaligned with the cultural backgrounds of participatingchildren and their families. The Hmong translations weredeveloped by a native Hmong-speaking parent whoworked at the school site as a bilingual paraprofession-al. Translations were checked by another native Hmongspeaker with a teaching credential, and discrepancies intranslation were adjusted, although questions aboutwhether the books had the “correct” or “best” transla-tion surfaced occasionally during the course of the in-tervention. This same procedure was used to provideSpanish translations of those books that were not com-mercially available in Spanish. Translated text was thentyped onto computer label paper. These labels were in-serted into individual books over the English appearingon each page.

ProcedureChildren, blocked by language group (Hmong, Spanish),were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups.For each of 2 six-week sessions, children took a differ-ent book home every Friday and returned it the followingFriday. A crossover design was used where one half of thechildren took home books 1–6 in their primary language,while the other half took home the same books inEnglish. For weeks 7–12, the language of the storybooks



for each child was the alternative to what it had been inthe first six weeks (see Table 1 for the sequence ofpretests, posttests, and program implementation).During the week that followed the at-home reading ofeach storybook, two classroom lessons on the same sto-rybook were conducted in English. These lessons includ-ed interactive storybook reading with big books,vocabulary instruction, and “pretend reading” with indi-vidual copies of books. A classroom-instruction-onlycontrol was not included because the theoretical focusof the study was on examining the language of story-book reading at home and its influence on second-language (English) classroom vocabulary learning.Classroom instruction in English was a constant.

Children’s vocabulary was assessed using the key vo-cabulary selected from the first set of books, the PPVT-III, and the Pre-IPT prior to weeks 1–6 and after weeks1–6 and weeks 7–12. The TVIP-H was also administeredto children who spoke Spanish as their primary language(n = 13) on the same testing schedule. The third testingon the vocabulary for books 1–6 served as a retentionmeasure of words introduced in the first six weeks of theprogram after an approximate 10-week interval. Thistesting also served as a measure of retest effects duringan untreated interval. For the second set of storybook-vocabulary items, which were drawn from books 7–12,children were tested after they had read books 1–6 (thiswas a pretest for books 7–12) and after books 7–12 had

been used for both at-home reading and in-class teach-ing (see Table 1).

Home storybook-reading and training events for fam-ily caregivers and their children were held prior to week1 and week 7. Families were asked to identify the besttime to hold these events, and the events were plannedaccording to the predominant preference. Dialogic read-ing principles were incorporated into the training(Whitehurst et al., 1988), and training was delivered infamily caregivers’ primary languages. Family caregiverswere invited to bring their children with them to theseevents. Childcare was provided for siblings of the pre-school children. The trainings emphasized the followingideas: enjoying storybook reading, sitting close together,pointing to the print, reading the story several times, andgetting the child to talk more (naming, labeling, askingquestions, responding to the child’s language, elaborat-ing, and extending). Overheads written in Hmong,Spanish, or English with a colored graphic and text ex-plaining each of these points were reviewed with the helpof bilingual family caregivers. It was also explained thateven if the family caregivers could not read the words inthe story (for those receiving books in English), theycould still engage in storybook reading by talking aboutthe pictures and telling a story. The bilingual family care-givers who had helped with the overhead presentationsalso responded to questions and comments from otherfamily caregivers in their group.

Table 1. Sequence of Pretests, Posttests, and Program Implementation

Pretest for weeks 1–6 Weeks 1–6 of program Posttest for weeks 1–6Pretest for weeks 7–12 Weeks 7–12 of program Posttest

Cohort A, Primary- Cohort A, English-language storybooks language storybooks

Cohort B, English- Cohort B, Primary-language storybooks language storybooks

PPVT-III vocabulary PPVT-III vocabulary PPVT-III vocabulary

Pre-IPT (0–42) Pretests on each week’s Pre-IPT (0–42) Pretests on each week’s Pre-IPT (0–42)vocabulary words (0–6) vocabulary words (0–6)

Storybook vocabulary After at-home reading, Storybook vocabulary After at-home reading, Storybook vocabulary for books 1–6 (0–36) test on each week’s (posttest) for books 1–6 test on each week’s (retention) for books 1–6

vocabulary words (0–6) (0–36) vocabulary words (0–6) (0–36)

After class lesson, test on Storybook vocabulary After class lesson, test on Storybook vocabulary each week’s vocabulary (pretest) for books 7–12 each week’s vocabulary for books 7–12 words (0–6) (0–36) words (0–6) (0–36)

Parent training Parent training

Following the overhead presentation, family care-givers and their children were given a book in the child’sprimary language and invited to participate in storybookreading. Cookies and punch also were provided to es-tablish a friendly and relaxed orientation to the interac-tive book-reading opportunities. Letters of invitationexplaining the purpose and procedures of the study weresent home prior to these family storybook-reading eventsand again prior to the implementation of the instruc-tional model. A bookmark with the same graphics usedon the overheads during the training was inserted intothe front of the take-home book each week and was writ-ten in the primary language of the child. The bookmarkswere sent home as a reminder of the recommendationsthat were given at that time and as a means of reachingparents who had not attended the training. These effortsserved as both a family support service and a way of pro-moting equivalent storybook-reading practices acrossfamilies.

Classroom instruction was conducted in English andincluded interactive storybook reading and explicit in-struction in target vocabulary items using picture cardsand printed words. Children received instruction twodays a week in groups of 10 or 11 in the regular class-room while the remaining 10 or 11 children in the samemorning or afternoon session participated in other insideor outside activities. Lessons lasted approximately 20minutes. Two trained undergraduate students served asteachers. These two teachers were trained by (a) observ-ing the author perform two lessons and (b) reviewing,discussing, and practicing two lessons and receiving cor-rective feedback prior to program implementation. Thetwo undergraduate teachers switched groups each weekto control for teacher effects. Scripted lesson plans wereused for the introduction of the storybooks and the vo-cabulary instruction to ensure fidelity of implementation.

Lesson components were sequenced as follows: in-troduction of book; introduction of each vocabulary itemwith repetition of the word by children followed byteacher response to or elaboration of children’s vocaliza-tions; storybook reading with the teacher pointing to textand responding to children’s vocalizations; follow-upactivities for each target word involving concrete experi-ences, acting out, and discussion (e.g., going over, under,and through chairs for the words over, under, and throughafter reading from Pat Hutchins’s Rosie’s Walk; puttingsmall Styrofoam balls in their pockets for the words snow-ball and pocket after reading Ezra Jack Keats’s The SnowyDay); and children pretend reading individual copies ofthe books. Vocabulary items were introduced by showingan 8" � 11" card with a picture from the storybook thatillustrated the target vocabulary word. The picture of thetarget vocabulary word was highlighted by coloring. The

target word was also written underneath the picture inlarge uppercase letters. A checklist detailing all the majorcomponents of the lesson (book introduction, vocabularycards, storybook reading with pointing to text, follow-upelaborating activities for each word, and individual bookreading) was used to assess fidelity of implementation.

ResultsPreliminary analyses of the children’s scores on thePPVT-III, the vocabulary pretest for storybooks 1–6, andthe Pre-IPT indicated that there were no significant dif-ferences between the groups assigned to storybooks inEnglish and those assigned to storybooks in their primarylanguages in the first of the 2 six-week storybook sessions. Table 2 shows means and standard deviationsfor the storybook-vocabulary, PPVT-III, Pre-IPT, and storybook-vocabulary retention measures by treatmentand language group.

Language of Storybook ReadingTo examine relationships between the language of story-book reading (English or primary language) and overallstorybook-vocabulary learning, two repeated measuresanalyses were performed. A 2 (storybook language:English or primary) � 2 (language group: Hmong orSpanish) analysis with the pretest and posttest scorestreated as repeated measures was computed for each ofthe 2 six-week sessions. For weeks 1–6, there was a sig-nificant effect for time, approximate F (1, 29) = 143.72, p< .001, and a significant time � treatment interaction,approximate F (1, 29) = 5.35, p < .05. Children scoredsignificantly higher at the end of the first session than atpretest. Follow-up analyses of the interaction revealedthat although the two treatments were not significantlydifferent at pretest, at posttest children who received sto-rybooks in their primary language identified significant-ly more of the storybook words in English (see Table 3)than did children who received storybooks in Englishfor home reading, t (32) = 2.06, p < .05. Cohen’s d effectsize (calculated as the mean difference between childrenin the two language groups, primary or English, dividedby the pooled standard deviation) for the posttest differ-ence was 0.87. There was also a significant interactionbetween time and language, F (1, 29) = 4.27, p = .05. Thesignificant interaction occurred because at time 2, but notat time 1, Spanish-speaking children scored significantlyhigher than Hmong-speaking children.

The 2 (storybook language: English or primary) � 2(language group: Hmong or Spanish) analysis for weeks7–12 on the overall storybook-vocabulary test revealed



a significant effect for time with children overall recogniz-ing more words at posttest than pretest, approximate F(1, 29) = 178.06, p < .001. There were no other signifi-cant main effects or any significant interactions for books7–12. Cohen’s d effect sizes ranged from .98 to 2.38 forthe time effect for each storybook language (see Table 3and Figure 1).

The next two repeated measures analyses comparedmean vocabulary-recognition scores immediately beforehome reading, immediately after home reading, and im-mediately after classroom storybook reading in Englishfor books 1–6 and books 7–12, respectively. These scoreswere derived by summing and averaging the scores forthe weekly tests. As for the overall vocabulary measure,a 2 (storybook language: English or primary) � 2 (lan-guage group: Hmong or Spanish) analysis was computed.Because I was interested in the change from pretest to

after home reading and again from after home readingto after class reading, the pretest scores were retained inthe analyses rather than being used as a covariate. Thisdecision was also supported by the evidence of statisti-cal equivalence between groups at the beginning of thestudy. There was a significant within-subjects effect fortime of storybook reading for books 1–6, approximate F(2, 58) = 43.73, p < .001, and for books 7–12, approxi-mate F (2, 58) = 266.58, p < .001. Vocabulary scores af-ter home storybook reading were significantly greaterthan scores before home storybook reading for weeks1–6, t (32) = 3.17, p < .05, and for weeks 7–12, t (32) =7.31, p < .001 (Table 4). Vocabulary scores after class-room activity were significantly greater than scores afterhome storybook reading for weeks 1–6, t (32) = 5.96, p <.001, and for weeks 7–12, t (32) = 16.87, p < .001.

Table 2. Means and Standard Deviations (in Parentheses) for Storybook-Vocabulary, the PPVT-III, the Pre-IPT, and Storybook-Vocabulary Retention Measures by Treatment and Primary-Language Group

Primary-language books English-language books

Books 1–6 Books 7–12 Books 1–6 Books 7–12

Measure Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

Spanish primary languageStorybook vocabularyCohort Aa 16.33 (4.08) 30.83 (5.23) 16.33 (3.50) 29.33 (3.44)Cohort Bb 16.43 (4.92) 29.00 (7.62) 18.00 (9.00) 28.86 (6.74)

PPVT-IIICohort A 17.33 (11.36) 23.67 (14.67) 23.67 (14.67) 35.67 (11.15)Cohort B 29.71 (20.61) 33.57 (19.13) 22.29 (12.67) 29.71 (20.61)

Pre-IPTCohort A 10.67 (9.81) 20.50 (11.67) 20.50 (11.67) 28.50 (8.98)Cohort B 20.86 (11.85) 25.86 (13.98) 10.14 (9.30) 20.86 (11.85)

Storybook-vocabularyretention 30.00 (4.73) 26.14 (7.01)

Hmong primary languageStorybook vocabularyCohort A 18.10 (6.06) 29.40 (5.42) 17.90 (6.44) 29.30 (5.44) Cohort B 11.90 (4.84) 23.10 (7.53) 13.20 (6.08) 19.80 (9.52)

PPVT-IIICohort A 18.11 (9.55) 20.89 (11.94) 20.89 (11.94) 30.78 (19.13)Cohort B 14.30 (9.02) 16.00 (11.08) 11.00 (6.60) 14.30 (9.02)

Pre-IPTCohort A 12.20 (7.63) 19.70 (11.56) 19.70 (11.56) 21.20 (9.17)Cohort B 10.40 (8.37) 13.60 (8.28) 3.80 (3.65) 10.40 (8.37)

Storybook-vocabularyretention 26.10 (5.72) 22.20 (5.51)

a Cohort A = children receiving primary-language storybooks for books 1–6 and English-language storybooks for books 7–12. b Cohort B = children receiving English-language storybooks for books 1–6 and primary-language storybooks for books 7–12.


There was, however, a significant time � treatmentinteraction for books 1–6. Mauchley’s test of sphericitywas significant, �2 = 6.85, p < .05, W = .80; thus, aGreenhouse–Geisser adjustment to the degrees of free-dom was made. The appropriate F statistic for the inter-action after the adjustment was F (1.64, 47.65) = 3.59, p< .05. Follow-up analyses to pinpoint the interaction forbooks 1–6 revealed that the language of home storybookreading did not have a significant effect on vocabularyscores in English before home reading, t (31) = .51, p >.05, or after home reading, t (31) = 1.02, p > .05. Afterclassroom storybook reading in English and vocabularyinstruction, children who received books in their primarylanguage for home reading identified significantly moreof the storybook words in English than did children whoreceived English-language storybooks for home reading,t (31) = 2.06, p < .05. Cohen’s d for this interaction ef-fect was .69 (calculated as the mean difference between

book-language groups, primary or English, after class-room reading divided by the pooled standard deviation).This result mirrored the primary-language storybook-reading advantage found for the overall vocabularyposttest and pinpointed the effect as occurring after class-room instruction in English but not after home storybookreading. There was no between-subjects main effect forlanguage of storybook reading; nor was there a main ef-fect for Hmong- versus Spanish-speaking children for theanalysis of books 1–6 or books 7–12.

A follow-up single factor (primary- or English-lan-guage storybooks) analysis of only those children in fam-ilies (n = 13) who reported being literate in English wasperformed for both the overall and weekly vocabularytests. These analyses showed the same advantage for pri-mary-language storybooks in the first six-week session onthe weekly vocabulary test, F (2, 18) = 3.68, p < .05,mean for primary-language storybooks = 5.00 (.52),

a Means for children whose primary language is Spanish.

Table 3. Means, Standard Deviations (in Parentheses), and Effect Sizes for Pretests and Posttests for Overall Storybook-Vocabulary Recognition, the PPVT-III, the Pre-IPT, and the TVIP-H for Books 1–6 and Books 7–12

Books 1–6 Books 7–12

Pretest Posttest Effect size Pretest Posttest Effect size

Primary-language 17.43 (5.32) 29.93 (5.22) 2.37 13.76 (5.25) 25.53 (7.98) 1.72group storybook n = 16 n = 16 n = 17 n = 17vocabulary

English-language 15.18 (7.56) 23.53 (9.16) .98 17.31 (5.44) 29.31 (4.66) 2.38group storybook n = 17 n = 17 n = 16 n = 16vocabulary

Grand mean 16.27 (6.57) 26.68 (8.24) 1.40 15.48 (5.56) 27.36 (6.72) 1.93n = 33 n = 33 n = 33 n = 33

Books 1–6 after 25.63 (6.15)eight-week n = 33retention interval

PPVT-III .38 .41Raw score 16.62 (10.32) 21.28 (14.50) 27.68 (16.97)Standard score 63 67 73

n = 32 n = 32 n = 32

Pre-IPTRaw score 8.93 (7.98) 17.27 (11.23) 21.21 (11.18)

n = 33 n = 33 n = 33

TVIP-Ha .45 .55Raw score 17.54 (10.31) 21.85 (8.99) 26.54 (8.01)Standard score 87 91 95

n = 13 n = 13 n = 13

PPVT-IIIa .46 .46Raw score 20.00 (11.86) 26.92 (17.66) 34.54 (15.36)Standard score 68 73 79

n = 13 n = 13 n = 13


mean for English-language storybooks = 4.36 (1.52), butnot on the overall vocabulary test, F (1, 9) = .03, p > .05,mean for primary-language storybooks = 31.43 (3.35),mean for English-language storybooks = 30.17 (4.92).This small group of family caregivers reported equal fre-quencies of home storybook reading for primary- and

English-language storybooks. For books 7–12, primary-and English-language storybook-vocabulary scores forthis group of children were equivalent.

Retention of vocabulary words from books 1–6 overthe two-and-a-half-month period between the posttestingof the words and the retention testing that occurred afterall the data for books 7–12 had been collected was ana-lyzed by comparing these two scores. The retention scorewas not significantly different from the score obtained im-mediately after completing the storybook-reading activi-ties, t (32) = 1.14, p > .05 (see Table 3). There was abouta one-word decrease in vocabulary scores over the reten-tion interval, showing that words were well learned. A 2(child language) � 2 (storybook language) univariateANOVA was also performed. This analysis revealed thatthe treatment advantage for the primary-language group,which was present at the end of weeks 1–6, was margin-ally significant, F (1, 29) = 3.51, p = .07, as was the effectfor language, F (1, 29) = 3.51, p = .07 (see Table 2).

Pretest storybook-vocabulary tests for session 1(books 1–6) and session 2 (books 7–12) were compared.These tests were separated by 8 to 11 weeks. If storybook-vocabulary changes reported for books 1–6 were due tothe overall language or cognitive growth that occurredduring session 1, then these two pretest scores would beexpected to be significantly different. There was no sig-nificant difference between the scores, t (32) = 1.25, p >.05. In contrast, the posttest vocabulary score for session1 (storybook reading completed) and the pretest scorefor session 2 (no storybook reading as yet) were signifi-cantly different, t (32) = 11.25, p < .001 (these two testswere given within a week of each other). Children scoredsignificantly higher on words that they had already en-countered during storybook reading than on words yet tobe encountered in home and classroom storybook read-ing; these words were tested at the same point in time.

Table 4. Means, Standard Deviations (in Parentheses), and Effect Sizes for Vocabulary per Book Before Home Reading,After Home Reading, and After Class Reading by Treatment Group for Books 1–6 and Books 7–12

Books 1–6 (n = 33) Books 7–12 (n = 33)

Primary- English- Primary- English-language language language language storybooks storybooks Overall Effect size storybooks storybooks Overall Effect size

Before home reading 2.77 (1.02) 2.58 (1.21) 2.67 (1.02) 2.14 (1.06) 2.29 (1.13) 2.21 (1.08)

After home reading 3.21 (1.06) 2.79 (1.23) 3.00 (1.15) .30 2.66 (.93) 2.96 (1.00) 2.80 (.96) .58

After class reading 4.42 (1.25) 3.46 (1.55) 3.93 (1.47) .70 4.26 (1.17) 4.77 (.92) 4.51 (1.07) 1.68

Figure 1. Means and Standard Deviations for the OverallStorybook-Vocabulary Measure for Hmong and SpanishPrimary-Language Children and the Combined Sample

Storybook Vocabulary

Num

ber

of W

ords

Cor

rect

ly R

ecog

nize

d

36

27

18

9

0

Pret

est

Afte

r 6

Wee

ks

Afte

r 12

Wee

ks

17.23 (6.94)16.27 (6.57)15.65 (6.43)

16.38 (4.15)15.48 (5.56)14.90 (6.34)

29.15(5.83)Spanish

Combined sample

Hmong26.20(7.14)

29.77(5.93)Spanish

Combined sample

Hmong24.60(9.00)

27.36(6.72)

26.63(8.24)

Individual differences in vocabulary learning were ex-plored by looking at the number of children who hadmade no gains, moderate gains, or large gains from pretestto posttest for each of the two book-reading sessions. Onlychildren who were present for both class lessons eachweek were included. For weeks 1–6, 5 children (17%)made no gains, 13 (45%) gained from two to eight words,and 11 children (38%) gained nine or more words (25% oftotal words). By comparison, for weeks 7–12, childrenmade greater gains: 5 (18%) gained two to eight words,and 23 (82%) gained nine or more words. The number ofchildren gaining over 25% of the words more than dou-bled. The frequency per million for words in the two setsof storybook-vocabulary items and the first 48 PPVT-IIIitems were determined using lists from Carroll, Davies,and Richman (1971). Target vocabulary from books 7–12was significantly more difficult (lower frequency) than thevocabulary from books 1–6, t (34) = 2.24, p < .05.

Combining and Switching Between L1 and L2The results of the overall vocabulary test and the weeklytests given during treatment and presented in the preced-ing section also show that there was no disadvantage forvocabulary learning when children switched from onelanguage to another for home reading nor when theyswitched from primary-language home reading to class-room instruction in English. In both book sessions, chil-dren scored at least equivalently on the overallstorybook-vocabulary tests whether they read books athome in their primary language or in English. They alsoshowed a significant increase in recognizing storybookvocabulary words after the class portion of treatment forboth books 1–6 and books 7–12, regardless of whetherthis instruction represented a language switch for story-book reading. A within-subjects t test comparing chil-dren’s scores for posttest overall storybook vocabularyfrom books 1–6 and books 7–12 was not significant, t (32) = -.88, p > .05, thereby indicating that there was nowithin-subjects advantage or disadvantage attributable toswitching from L1 to L2 or L2 to L1 home reading.Moreover, the correlation between children’s overall storybook-vocabulary test scores for weeks 1–6 andweeks 7–12 was r = .91. Similarly, results reported indetail in the next section on the Pre-IPT and the PPVT-IIIshow that the language of storybook reading had no ef-fect on more global indexes of language development(Pre-IPT) and English vocabulary (PPVT-III).

Spanish TVIP-H scores from all three testing occa-sions for the 13 children whose primary language wasSpanish were included in a repeated measures ANOVA.I had originally hoped to examine these scores by lan-

guage of storybook reading, but the small number ofSpanish-speaking children precluded this. There was asignificant overall multivariate effect, F (2, 11) = 6.87, p< .01. Spanish TVIP-H scores increased significantly fromtime 1, mean = 15.54 (SD = 10.28), to time 2, mean =21.87 (SD = 8.81), t (12) = 2.07, p < .05, and again fromtime 2 to time 3, mean = 26.54 (SD = 8.68), t (12) = 2.17,p < .01. Comparisons of children’s PPVT-III and TVIP-Hscores were performed using t tests on PPVT-III and TVIPz-scores at pretest, after books 1–6, and at posttest. I usedz-scores because the Spanish and English tests had differ-ent numbers of items. PPVT-III and TVIP-H scores werenot significantly different at any time. These same analy-ses were not performed for Hmong primary-languagechildren as there was no acceptable Hmong vocabularymeasure available. The results suggest that an instruc-tional model combining L1 and L2 was associated withcontinued general vocabulary growth in both Spanishand English. No claim that the book-reading programcaused this pattern is warranted.

Influence of English General Vocabulary,English Oral Language Proficiency,and Initial English Vocabulary Knowledgeon Storybook-Vocabulary LearningExamination of English oral proficiency and general vocab-ulary knowledge as mediators of storybook-vocabularylearning was accomplished using hierarchical regressionanalyses. In these analyses, the influence of pretest story-book vocabulary was compared to these other two moreglobal measures of vocabulary, which previous researchand theory have suggested are important mediators of vo-cabulary learning. The overall posttest vocabulary score forbooks 1–6 and for books 7–12 was regressed onto thepretest overall storybook-vocabulary score, the PPVT-IIIscore, and the Pre-IPT score for the appropriate time. Foreach book session, three regression analyses were per-formed with either the pretest overall storybook-vocabularyscore, the PPVT-III score, or the Pre-IPT score entered inthe first step, followed by entry of the remaining two vari-ables in the second step. These analyses allowed for ex-amination of the contribution of each of these threepotential mediators on its own when entered in the firststep and relative to the other two when all three variableswere included in the model in the second step. For bothsets of books, each of the three pretest scores was signifi-cant when entered at the first step. However, for books 1–6and books 7–12, results of the regression analyses showedthat only the overall storybook-vocabulary pretest re-mained as a significant correlate of overall posttest scoreswhen all three variables were included at the second step(see Table 5). This pattern indicates that global indexes of



general English-language vocabulary and overall Englishproficiency are less influential in second-language vocab-ulary acquisition than more circumscribed prior knowl-edge of specific target words.

Two 2 � 2 repeated measures analyses of variancewere performed to examine growth in language of story-book reading (primary language, English) and child-language group (Hmong, English). Using pretest andposttest PPVT-III scores as repeated measures, one analy-sis was performed for books 1–6, the other for books7–12. For books 1–6, children scored significantly high-er on the PPVT-III at posttest than they had at pretest, F(1, 28) = 13.13, p < .001. There were no main or inter-action effects for storybook language or child-languagegroup. Similarly, for books 7–12, there was a significanteffect for time with children scoring significantly higheron the PPVT-III posttest than the pretest, F (1, 28) =16.44, p < .001. The effect sizes were d = .37 (frompretest to posttest for books 1–6) and d = .41 (frompretest to posttest for books 7–12). These effect sizeswere notably smaller than the effect sizes for storybook-vocabulary learning (d = 1.40), from pretest to posttestfor books 1–6, and d = 1.93, from pretest to posttest forbooks 7–12). The PPVT-III words were no more diffi-cult than the storybook vocabulary for books 1–6 andbooks 7–12 as reflected by frequency per million. Figure2 shows this pattern of results. For books 7–12, there was

Table 5. Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analyses for Variables Predicting Storybook Vocabulary

Variable b SE b B t p R2

Books 1–6 (n = 33)Step 1Storybook pretest 0.92 0.15 0.74 6.05 0.00 0.56PPVT-III pretest 0.56 0.10 0.71 5.54 0.00 0.48Pre-IPT pretest 0.59 0.15 0.58 4.01 0.00 0.32

Step 2, full model 0.61Constant 12.35 2.52 4.91 0.00Storybook pretest 0.66 0.23 0.54 2.87 0.00PPVT-III pretest 0.09 0.19 0.12 0.50 0.62Pre-IPT pretest 0.23 0.17 0.22 1.29 0.21

Books 7–12 (n = 32)Step 1Storybook pretest 0.86 0.16 0.71 5.22 0.00 0.51PPVT-III pretest 0.29 0.07 0.62 4.33 0.00 0.39Pre-IPT pretest 0.40 0.10 0.66 4.83 0.00 0.44

Step 2, full model 0.55Constant 15.05 2.62 5.75 0.00Storybook pretest 0.56 0.23 0.47 2.44 0.02PPVT-III pretest 0.04 0.11 0.09 0.37 0.71Pre-IPT pretest 0.15 0.14 0.25 1.07 0.30

Figure 2. Means and Standard Deviations for the PPVT-IIIVocabulary Measure for Hmong and Spanish Primary-Language Children and the Combined Sample

PPVT-III Vocabulary

Num

ber

of W

ords

Cor

rect

ly R

ecog

nize

d

36

27

18

9

0

Pret

est

Afte

r 6

Wee

ks

Afte

r 12

Wee

ks

20.00(11.86)

26.92(17.66)

21.28(14.50)

27.68(16.96)

23.24(16.90)

14.31(8.71)

16.62(10.32) 17.42

(10.75)

34.54(15.36)

Spanish

Hmong

Combinedsample


also a significant time � treatment interaction, F (1, 28)= 5.82, p < .05. Follow-up within-subjects comparisonsrevealed that children who received storybooks inEnglish during the second session had significantly high-er posttest PPVT-III scores and those children who re-ceived primary-language storybooks had equivalentPPVT-III scores at pretest and posttest. Table 3 shows themean raw scores and standard scores for the PPVT-III ateach testing time.

Growth in oral proficiency in English was examinedas a mediator of storybook-vocabulary learning using a2 � 2 repeated measures ANOVA for books 1–6 andbooks 7–12 that paralleled the analyses performed for thePPVT-III measures. Language of storybook reading (pri-mary language, English) and primary-language group(Hmong, Spanish) were independent variables. Childrenhad higher English oral scores from pretest to posttest forbooks 1–6, F (1, 29) = 25.79, p < .001, and from pretestto posttest for books 7–12, F (1, 29) = 14.76, p < .01.There were no significant language-group or storybook-language main effects from pretest to posttest for books1–6. For books 7–12, Spanish children had significantlyhigher English oral proficiency scores than did Hmongchildren, F (1, 29) = 4.74, p < .05.

To evaluate how initial level of vocabulary knowledgemediated storybook-vocabulary learning, children weredivided into low, medium, and high groups based on athree-way split of initial storybook-vocabulary scores.This variable, along with language of home storybookreading, served as between-subjects factors in a 3 (abili-ty) � 2 (primary- or English-language storybooks) uni-variate analysis of variance with the gain scores betweenpretest and posttest for each of the two book-reading ses-sions as dependent variables. Gain scores rather than rawscores were used to capture growth independent of initialvocabulary level. There was no significant main or inter-action effect for initial vocabulary ability for books 1–6 orbooks 7–12. Analysis of frequency distributions of gainscores for each of the three vocabulary-ability groupsshowed that for each ability level, approximately 60% of

children demonstrated gain scores of 50% or more forunknown words. The estimate for average number of un-known words was computed by subtracting the overallpretest mean for each book session from 36 (the totalnumber of tested words). This difference was divided by2 to locate the gain score representing 50%. For both ses-sions, the 50% gain score for unknown words was 10.Table 6 shows these percentages.

Family-Caregiver and Home InfluencesTwo nonparametric Mann–Whitney tests were per-formed to compare reported reading frequency by treat-ment group (primary- or English-language storybooks)for the first and second sessions, respectively. For books1–6, families who received primary-language storybooksreported significantly greater book reading than fami-lies who received books in English, U = 55.5, p < .05.The primary-language book mean rank was 18.30, andthe English book mean rank was 11.46. In this analysis,all scores were ranked, and the distributions of ranks forthe two treatment groups were compared. The meanrank for each group was the sum or ranks for that groupdivided by the number of cases. The mean ranks forweeks 7–12 were not significantly different, U = 65.5, p > .05. The mean frequency of storybook reading re-ported by parents was 2.70 (SD = .75) for books 1–6and 2.83 (SD = .71) for books 7–12. A score of 2 corre-sponded with a report of one to two readings per week,and a score of 3 corresponded to a report of three tofive readings per week.

When family caregivers indicated which languagethey preferred for storybook reading on survey 2, 28(84%) selected their primary language and two selectedEnglish. A chi-square analysis of the distribution of theEnglish and primary-language choice was significant (�2

= 15.70, p < .001) in favor of primary language. Thesestated preferences matched the language of books select-ed by family caregivers to keep for their children at theend of each session. Eighty percent of the choices made

Table 6. Percentage of Children With Low, Medium, and High Initial Levels of Storybook-Vocabulary Knowledge With Vocabulary Gain Scores of 50% or More for Books 1–6 and Books 7–12

Initial vocabulary knowledge Books 1–6 Mean gain Books 7–12 Mean gain

Low initial level 67% 10.75 (8.00) 73% 11.00 (6.19)

Medium initial level 60% 10.66 (2.70) 60% 12.78 (5.07)

High initial level 55% 9.36 (2.73) 64% 11.63 (2.98)


by Spanish-speaking caregivers were for Spanish-language books, and 70% of the books selected byHmong family caregivers were in Hmong.

Caregiver reports on the presence in the home of primary- or English-language written materials for adults(books, newspapers, magazines, other) reflected a re-stricted range of responses. Eighty percent of caregiversreported no more than one type of written materials inEnglish, and 100% reported no more than one type ofprimary-language written materials. Because of this verylimited variability, these two variables were excludedfrom further analysis. Kendall’s tau nonparametric cor-relations were calculated using (a) family caregivers’English oral proficiency; (b) caregivers’ ability to read andwrite in English and in their primary language; (c) num-ber of primary- and English-language children’s booksin the home; and (d) children’s PPVT-III vocabularyscores, their English oral proficiency, and their storybook-

vocabulary knowledge after books 1–6 and books 7–12(see Table 7). Family caregivers’ reported knowledge ofEnglish (on a three-point scale) and reported ability toread and write in English were the family-language vari-ables most consistently and strongly correlated with chil-dren’s English vocabulary measures. The number ofindividuals in the family who spoke no English and thenumber of English-language children’s books found inthe home were family-language variables moderately as-sociated with children’s vocabulary scores after treat-ment. Reported book-reading frequency was significantlybut modestly associated with storybook-vocabularyscores; however, book-reading frequency was not asso-ciated with PPVT-III vocabulary scores or English oralproficiency (see Table 7). There was limited variabilityin the number of children’s books in the home: One thirdof the families reported having no primary-language chil-

Table 7. Correlations Among Family-Language and Home Resources and Children’ Storybook Vocabulary, PPVT-III Scores,and Pre-IPT Scores

Measure

Caregiver1. Oral Eng. .85*** .09 .46** -.13 .04 .42* .39* .35* .29 .32* .45** .18 .18 .40** .35** .21* .38* .30*2. Lit. Eng. .11 .33 -.22 .15 .36* -.40* .29 .32* .34* .47** .28 .37* .38* .35** .31* .35* .30*3. Lit. prim. .10 .01 .22 .08 .06 .21 .16 .12 .13 .21 .16 .16 .18 .18 .09 .29*4. Books Eng. .13 .01 .03 -.28 .56*** .35 .35* .34* .24 .30* .34* .25 .29* .37* .33*5. Books prim. -.15 -.21 .03 .10 .00 .13 .04 .14 .01 .15 .13 .11 .07 .166. Freq. 1 .26 .08 .15 .30* .37* .30* .25 .17 .22 .23 .32* .19 .297. Freq. 2 .03 .02 .18 .09 .19 .01 .01 .14 .11 .03 .09 .078. No Eng. # -.37* -.34* -.27* -.35* -.29* -.45** -.34* -.28* -.14 -.26 -.239. Eng. # .22 .23 .18 .17 .25 .22 .20 .16 .29* .21

Child1. Story vocab. 1 .63*** .65*** .63*** .69*** .68*** .69*** .58*** .65*** .54***2. Story vocab. 2 .63*** .66*** .60*** .64*** .71*** .67*** .65*** .56***3. Story vocab. 21 .71*** .64*** .60*** .64*** .66*** .73*** .66***4. Story vocab. 22 .60*** .63*** .60*** .66*** .56*** .47***5. Home 1 .62*** .69*** .55*** .58*** .52***6. Home 2 .71*** .58*** .62*** .54***7. PPVT-III 1 .64*** .73*** .66***8. PPVT-III 2 .67*** .56***9. Pre-IPT 1 .69***

Note. Oral Eng. = caregiver’s reported oral English proficiency; Lit. Eng. = caregiver’s ability to read and write in English; Lit. prim. = caregiver’s ability to readand write in his or her primary language; Books Eng. = number of English-language children’s books in home; Books prim. = number of primary-languagechildren’s books in home; Freq. 1 = reading frequency for books 1–6; Freq. 2 = reading frequency for books 7–12; No Eng. # = number of household memberswho speak no English; Eng. # = number of household members who speak English; Story vocab. 1 = pretest storybook vocabulary for books 1–6; Story vocab. 2 = posttest storybook vocabulary for books 1–6; Story vocab. 21 = pretest storybook vocabulary for books 7–12; Story vocab. 22 = posttest storybookvocabulary for books 7–12; Home 1 = mean weekly words recognized after home reading for books 1–6; Home 2 = mean weekly words recognized after homereading for books 7–12; PPVT-III 1 = PPVT-III score after books 1–6; PPVT-III 2 = PPVT-III score after books 7–12; Pre-IPT 1 = Pre-IPT score after books 1–6; Pre-IPT 2 = Pre-IPT score after books 7–12. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

Lit.

Eng

Lit.

prim

.

Boo

ks E

ng.

Boo

ks p

rim

.

Freq

. 1

Freq

. 2

No

Eng.

#

Eng.

#

Stor

y vo

cab.

1

Stor

y vo

cab.

2

Stor

y vo

cab.

21

Stor

y vo

cab.

22

Hom

e 1

Hom

e 2

PPV

T-III

1

PPV

T-III

2

Pre-

IPT

1

Pre-

IPT

2

dren’s books, and 50% reported having five or fewerEnglish-language children’s books.

Caregivers’ engagement with the reading programwas further examined by arraying all of their availableresponses to the question “What did you like about thebooks coming home from school for reading with yourchild?” Appendix D shows these responses translatedinto English. The specificity and credibility of these re-sponses provide additional qualitative data suggestingthat most family caregivers were indeed participating inthe program. The correlation between time 1 and time 2in family caregivers’ survey reports of the number of peo-ple in the home who did and did not speak English werer = .84 and r = .57, respectively. The correlation betweencaregivers’ estimates from survey 1 of the amount ofEnglish they spoke and their ability to read and write inEnglish as taken from a survey administered by theteachers was r = .91. These correlations suggest good re-liability of these estimates.

DiscussionLanguage of Storybook Reading and Vocabulary AcquisitionThis study provided evidence that primary-language sto-rybook reading in the home was as effective as home sto-rybook reading in English for promoting Englishvocabulary acquisition in preschool English-languagelearners from two different language groups. In fact, atthe end of the first six-week session, children who hadreceived storybooks in their primary language performedsignificantly better on English recognition of target story-book words than other English-language learners whoread books at home in English. This advantage reflecteda large effect size. This benefit was seen after childrenexperienced a combination of home primary-languagereading and related classroom lessons in English. It wasthought that this sequential learning model would mar-shal both home and classroom language resources insupport of second-language vocabulary learning. Boththe pretest–posttest overall storybook-vocabulary meas-ure and the aggregated weekly tests, which were given af-ter classroom storybook reading, showed this result.

The weekly vocabulary test results helped pinpointwhen primary-language storybook reading had an effectin the first session. Immediately after home reading andprior to classroom instruction, children who received primary-language storybooks performed no better onEnglish vocabulary than those who had received story-books in English. However, after the combined homeand classroom experiences, children who received primary-

language storybooks had an advantage. This pattern iscompatible with the idea that children were developingprimary-language vocabulary and concepts that becameavailable in the second-language context of the classroomlessons and supported acquisition of the related Englishvocabulary. This pattern was seen only in weeks 1–6,indicating that the above idea should be considered onlypartially supported and preliminary pending replication.

A number of interesting speculations arise from thefinding that there was no advantage for primary-languagestorybook reading in the second six-week session, eventhough significant storybook-vocabulary learning oc-curred in weeks 7–12 with a large effect size (d = 1.40for books 1–6, d = 1.93 for books 7–12) and with moredifficult vocabulary words (indexed by word-frequencynorms). It is possible that children were becoming moreeffective in learning second-language vocabulary wordsduring classroom-reading and word-instruction experi-ences. Another possibility is that children’s growing over-all English proficiency and English vocabulary knowledgemay have bootstrapped their second-language wordlearning in the second session. In addition, the higher rateof family participation in the training event held prior tothe second session may have resulted in a broader baseof home support, although reported reading frequencieswere not higher for the second session.

The evidence of at least parity between English- andprimary-language home storybook reading for Englishvocabulary learning assessed after home experiences andafter classroom experiences in English across both ses-sions of storybook reading adds to a large body of evi-dence with older children that educational experience inL1 does not compromise L2 learning (August & Hakuta,1997; Corson, 1999; Cummins, 1999; Genesee et al.,2006). In the present study, the primary language wascarefully orchestrated to align with specific L2 languagetargets. The pattern of equivalent scores on the pretest forbooks 1–6 and books 7–12 (separated by 8 to 12 weeks)combined with significantly higher posttest scores forbooks 1–6 compared to the pretest scores for books 7–12(measured within one week of each other) also points tothe role of the storybook experiences in contributing tochildren’s storybook-vocabulary learning in English.

There was significant improvement from pretest toafter home reading and again from after home readingto after class reading and vocabulary instruction inEnglish. Without a control group that did not partici-pate in storybook reading, it cannot be claimed that eachof the two components of the program added to chil-dren’s vocabulary acquisition of story-specific words.However, the effect sizes found in this study do matchor exceed those reported in other experiments where storybook reading was compared to no-reading controls,


including one study that involved a home-plus-schoolprogram (d = .22; Whitehurst, Epstein, et al., 1994).Pretest to after home-reading effect sizes were d = .30(books 1–6) and d = .58 (books 7–12). The after home-reading to after classroom-instruction effect sizes were d = .70 (weeks 1–6) and d = 1.68 (weeks 7–12), suggest-ing that the classroom instruction was particularlyeffective. In addition, the effect sizes for the overallstorybook-vocabulary scores for books 1–6 (d = 1.40)and books 7–12 (d = 1.93) were almost four times largerthan those for the PPVT-III vocabulary measure at thesame points in time (d = .37 for weeks 1–6 and d = .41 forweeks 7–12), showing much greater growth in instruct-ed words than overall vocabulary growth. The evidencethat story-specific vocabulary learning was greater thangeneral vocabulary growth suggests that home storybookreading benefited lexical expansion mostly for words en-countered during storybook reading.

There was a great deal of vocabulary testing in thisstudy, and all testing used the same picture-identificationprocedure. This is a significant concern. There are severalpoints, however, that cast doubt on a complete repeated-testing explanation for the data. Children’s performanceat the beginning of the second session (weeks 7–12) wasno greater than that in the very first week of the first ses-sion, and they had been having weekly vocabulary testsfor six weeks. Although this pattern indicates that a test-taking interpretation of gains cannot reasonably be made,it is still possible that pretesting and testing after thehome storybook reading may have directed children’sattention to tested words and contributed to their learn-ing of these words, thereby constituting part of the treat-ment effect. If so, it would be expected that this effectwould be spread evenly across storybook-language treat-ment groups. However, differential effects for storybooklanguage were found for books 1–6. Biemiller and Boote(2006) performed a careful empirical test of repeatedtesting in their study of vocabulary learning from story-book reading with kindergarten and first-grade children,about half of whom were English-language learners, andfound no evidence of repeated testing effects. Another ar-gument against a strong repeated-testing interpretation ofthe data is that the gains from test to test were not even-ly distributed. Gains made after the class storybook read-ing were greater than those made after home reading.This pattern would require a nonlinear repeated-testingexplanation. Moreover, such an effect would not be com-patible with evidence showing diminishing rather thanincreasing effects of repeated testing (Hausknecht,Halpert, Di Paolo, & Moriarty Gerrard, 2007). There wasalso evidence of different rates of growth related to bothprimary-language group and language of storybook read-ing that would be difficult to account for with a repeated-

testing explanation. Finally, the retention test for the vo-cabulary words found in books 1–6 did not show an in-crease as would be expected if repeated testing alonewere responsible for vocabulary increases.

Combining and Switching Between L1 and L2Children were able to use both L1 and L2 flexibly be-cause even after switching from one storybook languageto another they still had very robust gains in story-specific vocabulary learning. There was no negative influ-ence on second-language vocabulary acquisition fromreading books in two different languages. After childrenexperienced a shift in the language of storybooks thatwere used for home reading (books 7–12), they stilldemonstrated a significant book-specific vocabulary in-crease, and this increase was of a greater magnitude thanthe increase demonstrated prior to the shift (books 1–6).The correlation of scores between the first and secondsessions for individual children when there had been aswitch in language was r = .91. This very high within-subjects correlation further indicates that a language shiftdid not affect vocabulary learning. In fact, the conditionin which home reading in the primary language was fol-lowed by a switch to classroom reading and instructionin English was the only one where a significant effect ofstorybook language was found. A comparison of thenumber of words learned in the first and second sessionsof the program suggests that children’s rate of vocabularylearning accelerated in the second half of the program(see Figure 1), after there had been a switch in languageof home storybook reading. Repeated-testing effects can-not account for this pattern of word gains because thewords for which there was accelerated vocabulary learn-ing (weeks 7–12) had not been tested more frequentlythan the words for weeks 1–6. The differential rate offamily-caregiver participation in weeks 1–6 (50%) andweeks 7–12 (80%) may account for part of the accelera-tion in the second session.

The difference in effect sizes for the storybook vocab-ulary and the PPVT-III vocabulary measures (d = 1.40and d = 1.93 for storybooks 1–6 and books 7–12, respec-tively; d = .37 for Peabody time 1 to time 2 and d = .41 fortime 2 to time 3) shows that children improved muchmore markedly on storybook-vocabulary items that wereno less difficult than Peabody vocabulary items, suggest-ing that general English vocabulary development acrosstime cannot entirely account for the results. The overalllevel of PPVT-III vocabulary growth of about 11 words or10 standard score points compares favorably to that re-ported by Wasik and Bond (2001; 7 standard scorepoints) and exceeds the rate of general vocabulary de-


velopment reported by Whitehurst, Epstein, et al. (1994)for English-only children who had standard score in-creases of about 2 to 4 points. These gains show that inaddition to growth in storybook vocabulary, childrenexperienced overall vocabulary growth, albeit of smallermagnitude. The source of this growth, however, cannotbe attributed to the storybook intervention.

The results for the Spanish TVIP-H are also informa-tive regarding combining and switching languages.Spanish-speaking children showed significant gains intheir TVIP-H vocabulary from the beginning to the mid-dle and again from the middle to the end of the study.There is mixed evidence regarding the course of L1 de-velopment in early sequential bilingualism. Some stud-ies revealed evidence of L1 loss (Leseman, 2000;Schaerlaekens, Zink, & Verheyden, 1995) in settingswhere L2 is the language used in the classroom. Othersfound no such loss when children participated in high-quality, Spanish–English bilingual preschool programs(Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, & Espinosa, 1995; Winsler,Díaz, Espinosa, & Rodríguez, 1999). A very recent studyreported L1 stabilization with substantial L2 growth in anEnglish-language preschool setting (Kan & Kohnert,2005). The storybook-reading experiences implementedin this study were designed to foster the oral use of de-contextualized language. These L1 or L2 experienceswith decontextualized language when combined withL2 classroom experience were associated with contin-ued L1 growth in the very small group of Spanish primary-language children participating in this study.

Comparison of the standard scores for the PPVT-IIIand the Spanish TVIP-H show that children started withhigher Spanish receptive vocabulary and exhibited some-what greater standard-score growth in English. PPVT-IIIscores went from 68 to 79 and the Spanish TVIP-Hscores increased from 87 to 95. Vocabulary growth inboth languages was significant from pretest to time 2and again from time 2 to time 3. There was no evidenceof a negative outcome on either L1 or L2 from combiningand switching between English- and primary-languagestorybook reading.

Language-Ability and Language-GroupMediators of Storybook-VocabularyLearningAn important finding is that there were no differences invocabulary gain scores based on low, medium, or highinitial storybook-vocabulary knowledge for either books1–6 or books 7–12. Approximately 60% of children at allthree initial ability levels learned approximately 50% ormore of the unknown words. Many previous studieshave reported Matthew effects in classroom vocabulary

learning where children with lower initial vocabularyknowledge benefited less than those with higher initialvocabulary knowledge (e.g., Sénéchal et al., 1995;Stanovich, 1986; see Hargrave & Sénéchal, 2000, for anexception).

English oral proficiency and overall English receptivevocabulary were significantly correlated with learningstorybook-specific vocabulary, but prior knowledge ofstorybook-specific vocabulary was the most closely re-lated to final performance. In spite of limited English oralproficiency and English vocabulary, children of varyinglevels of initial L2 vocabulary successfully learned L2vocabulary. These results should encourage the applica-tion of the type of high-quality storybook reading and vo-cabulary instruction implemented in this study inpreschool programs for English-language learners.

The results for language groups show uniformity andvariation. In terms of grammar and phonology, Spanishis more similar than Hmong to English, and in addition,Spanish shares many lexical cognates with English.Nonetheless, children whose primary language wasSpanish and those whose primary language was Hmongshowed similar robust levels of vocabulary learning fromthe in-class experiences based on overall rates of storybook-vocabulary learning. The Spanish-speakingchildren might have been expected to show a greaterbenefit from primary-language reading than those chil-dren whose primary language was Hmong, but this wasnot the case. Studies, however, have revealed that 40% to70% of the words in preschool bilingual children’s com-posite L1-plus-L2 vocabularies are known in only onelanguage (Marchman & Martínez-Sussman, 2002; Peñaet al., 2002), rendering the possibility of cognate trans-fer less likely in young children. This same pattern ofgrowth was found for both primary-language groups. Inthe presence of instruction, both language groups madesimilar progress in learning words targeted during instruction.

Peabody scores and English oral proficiency scoresshowed that Spanish-speaking children were growing inEnglish-language competence at a faster rate than wereHmong-speaking children. Spanish-speaking childrenshowed strong gains in English Peabody vocabulary.Their standard scores increased from 69 to 81, a 12-pointgain in six months. By comparison, Hmong-speakingchildren’s standard scores increased from 62 to 67, a five-point gain. Initial Peabody standard scores for the twogroups were not significantly different at pretest, but atposttest, Spanish-speaking children had significantlyhigher Peabody scores. On English oral proficiency,Spanish-speaking children scored significantly higherthan Hmong-speaking children at the end of the program(after books 7–12), although the two groups of children


were not significantly different on English oral proficien-cy at pretest or after books 1–6. These results under-score the importance of developing theoreticalframeworks that account for differences between lan-guage groups within the population of English-languagelearners. Although cognizant of the limitations in com-paring English-language learners to the normative sampleon the Peabody test, I have presented these data to showhow the English receptive vocabulary of the English-lan-guage learners in this study compared to the normativesample and to afford comparison of the results of thisstudy to other studies. No conclusions about the generallanguage development or cognitive abilities of these pre-school English-language learners can be drawn from orwarranted by these comparisons

Magnitude of EffectsThe rate of vocabulary growth found in this study wasapproximately 1.1 of 6 tested words per five-day weekin the first session and 2.2 words per week in the sec-ond session. The rate of first-language word acquisitionfor 3- to 4-year-old children has been estimated to beabout three new words per day, or 15 words over a five-day period (Bloom, 2000). Comparing the rate of wordlearning demonstrated in this study to the estimatedword-learning rate reported for 3- to 4-year-old childrenmight suggest that the magnitude of effects was not great,in spite of statistical significance. However, this compar-ison would be inappropriate because the measures usedin this study sampled only six words from the corpus ofexposure in the storybooks and did not include anymeasure or estimate of additional word learning that mayhave occurred. The storybook-vocabulary measures doc-umented learning of specific target words and did notestimate overall vocabulary growth and size.

Children gained about 33% of words tested for eachsession or about 60% of unknown tested words on aver-age. Biemiller and Boote (2006) reported that monolin-gual children from kindergarten to grade 2 learned about40% of unknown words when storybook reading wascombined with word explanations, although these re-searchers targeted more words than was done in thisstudy. Other studies with preschool to first-grade mono-lingual children have demonstrated additional gains of14% to 30% from explaining words when comparedwith learning words from repeated readings alone(Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002; Elley, 1989; Penno etal., 2002; Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Sénéchal, 1997;Sénéchal et al., 1995). The results of this study comparevery favorably to others reported in the literature, sever-al of which included older and mostly English-only chil-dren. The comparable rates of word learning for children

with different levels of initial vocabulary knowledge undoubtedly contributed to the large overall effect size (d = 1.66) averaged across both sessions. The rates oflearning and associated effect sizes were greatest for thechange between after home reading and after classroominstruction for both sessions. This finding is not surpris-ing because explicit instruction of the target vocabularywords accompanied the classroom storybook reading,and explicit instruction has been shown to benefit the vo-cabulary learning of English-language learners (August &Hakuta, 1997; Roberts & Neal, 2004; Snow et al., 1998).Ceiling effects may have masked children’s potential forstorybook-vocabulary learning. At posttest for both ses-sions, 20% of children received scores of 34 to 36 out ofa possible 36. The words selected for vocabulary devel-opment represented a corpus of moderately difficultwords based on word frequencies. These data suggest theimportance of setting high expectations for English-language learners’ second-language vocabulary learning.

Family-Caregiver and Home InfluencesThree sources of evidence converge on the conclusionthat family caregivers were engaged in supporting theirchildren’s language and vocabulary learning and that thisengagement was beneficial to their children. First, a highpercentage of family caregivers attended the two storybook-reading introductory sessions, particularly thesecond session, which was attended by 80% of the care-givers. Second, caregiver comments about the programshowed that they viewed it as shaping and benefitingtheir children’s language and literacy learning. In addi-tion, family caregivers reported an average frequency ofstorybook reading of almost three to five times a week.Finally, for the first session, caregivers in the primary-language treatment group reported reading significantlymore often than parents in the English-language treat-ment group, and children in the primary-language groupscored significantly higher on storybook vocabulary.These findings are consistent with the possibility thatreading frequency mediates vocabulary learning, al-though no causal interpretation is warranted.

Language characteristics of the children’s families andlanguage resources in the home were the aspects of thefamily environment examined in this study. These wereselected based on evidence that such language charac-teristics and home resources influence language growth.Correlations between the home-language environmentand English vocabulary learning showed that caregivers’oral and written English competencies and the availabil-ity of English-language children’s books in the homewere associated with English vocabulary knowledge to amodest but significant degree. There were no consistent


relationships between the children’s English-languagemeasures and the primary-language literacy of the care-givers or the primary language of the children’s booksfound in the home. These results provide further evi-dence for the relationship between caregiver languageabilities, book availability, book-reading frequency, andvocabulary development shown repeatedly in studieswith monolingual children and extend such evidence toinclude English-language learners. However, this rela-tionship is complex. Primary-language storybook readingbenefited vocabulary learning in the first session of thestudy. By augmenting home-language resources with sto-rybooks and a program to support and encourage homestorybook reading, as was done in this study, the rela-tionship between ambient home language, the home lit-erary environment, and children’s language developmentmay be modified.

Children’s books play an important role in promot-ing the high levels of decontextualized language neededin school; however, only limited numbers of primary-and English-language books were found in the homes ofthe children who participated in this study. The limitednumber of primary-language children’s books available(33% of caregivers reported zero primary-languagebooks, 74% reported fewer than five) highlights the storybook-reading challenges faced by these low-incomefamilies in which 68% of family caregivers were fluentonly in the primary language. There was a modest corre-lation between reported frequency of storybook readingduring the first session and posttest storybook vocabu-lary for both books 1–6 and books 7–12; however, therewas no significant relationship between reported fre-quency of storybook reading at time 2 and any of thevocabulary measures. The speculations offered earlierfor the apparent acceleration of vocabulary learning inthe second half of the program, which pointed to thepossibility of children having a growing ability to learnsecond-language words, might explain the diminishingrole of storybook-reading frequency at time 2.

However, although relationships among familyEnglish-language characteristics, the presence of English-and primary-language books in the home, reading fre-quency, and story-specific vocabulary learning were ex-amined, specific characteristics of the home readingsessions themselves were not identified. Possible linguis-tic factors operating during storybook reading that couldaccount for the reported benefit of primary-language sto-rybook reading in session 1 were considered in the the-oretical framework developed for this study. Thesefactors included access to meaning, lexical expansion,and sociolinguistic enhancement and remain an impor-tant focus for subsequent studies.

Limitations and ConclusionsA significant limitation of this study is that there was nocomprehensive determination of the characteristics of thecaregiver–child storybook readings in the home. Anotherlimitation is that the home reading and classroom lessonscannot be independently evaluated. An interest in ex-amining the theoretical possibilities of support from first-language home reading to second-language classroomexperience, the additive effects of at-home reading andclassroom instruction, and a negative influence fromswitching the language of books necessitated a sequentialdesign between the home and classroom portions of themodel. In addition, there was no comparison group thatdid not receive the home-reading and classroom experi-ences. Because the main theoretical focus of the studywas language of storybook, this was the only variable that was manipulated. The English-language storybook-reading group was a very closely matched control groupfor the primary-language reading group and vice versa.The method of selecting words was based on researcherjudgment and experience rather than a conceptually re-fined or precise empirical basis. In addition, trained un-dergraduate teachers rather than regular teachersimplemented the classroom experiences. The possibilityof repeated testing necessitates caution in thinking aboutthe results, even though several sources of evidence weremarshaled to mitigate this worry. Overall, the sample isrelatively small, and it is particularly so for the Spanishvocabulary results.

A program of home and classroom activities de-signed to additively maximize vocabulary learning of preschool English-language learners from low-socioeconomic status families was implemented in thisstudy. The tested model was designed to draw upon andprovide language resources in the home and in theEnglish-language classroom environment typically expe-rienced by preschool English-language learners. Overall,the data show that this combination model effectivelypromoted vocabulary learning for preschool childrenwith very limited English proficiency. English (secondlanguage) oral proficiency and English Peabody recep-tive language were correlated with vocabulary learning,and children scored substantially below standard scoresof 100 on these measures. However, the children’s limit-ed English did not deter them from learning English vo-cabulary words, as they showed an average gain of about33% to 60% of tested words. Children of all levels of ini-tial English vocabulary benefited from the program.There were no negative effects associated with switch-ing storybook reading from one language to another aschildren showed very similar rates of vocabulary learn-ing both before and after switching from either their


primary language or English to the other language, andthey showed the highest rates of learning following theclassroom instruction. It was also possible to engage fam-ily caregivers whose families were of low-socioeconomicstatus and whose children spoke a primary languageother than English in supporting their children’s vocab-ulary development when caregivers were provided a lit-eracy tool they could use.

Evidence of caregivers’ preference for storybooks intheir primary language and the partial support for the su-periority of primary-language home storybook readingfor second-language vocabulary acquisition indicates thatthe potential benefits of primary-language storybookreading merit further exploration. The results from thisstudy show that home storybook-reading experienceswith either primary- or English-language books can beimplemented with at least equivalent effects on the vo-cabulary acquisition of English-language learners.

NotesI would like to thank the children and families of the Noralto schoolcommunity for their eagerness, openness, and collaboration thatensured the success of the storybook-reading program reported inthis study.

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Submitted March 7, 2007Final revision received November 2, 2007

Accepted November 5, 2007

Theresa A. Roberts teaches in the Department of ChildDevelopment, California State University, Sacramento, USA;e-mail [email protected].


Appendix A

Storybook-Vocabulary Test Items

Books 1–6 Books 7–12

POND STIRSCARE OVENWOKE-UP CUTTINGMOUSE HOUSEWORKSTREET SWEEPMOUNTAIN PEARWATCHMAN CHAIRSFATHER BREADSTICK CRUMBDOOR MARBLESSLEEPING CHEESEWHISTLE LEAFESCALATOR KITEGROCERIES CATERPILLARSHADOW MAILBOXHEN COCOONUNDER WASHEDMONKEY UMBRELLABREAK WHEATBUTTON SEWINGCAPS WATEREDBEEHIVE CLIMBFENCE JARHOUSE WINDANGRY PUDDLESNOWBALL DRYINGFRIEND PAINTOVER YARNTEDDY BEAR MICEPOCKET BUBBLESCARTON CLOAKLAMP LEAVINGWINDOW SHEEPTREE LIE DOWNGRANNY GATEANGEL BUTTERFLY


Survey 11. How many people in your family speak some

English?

2. How many people in your family speak no English?

3. How much English do the adults who take care of_____ most speak? (little = 1, some = 2, a lot = 3)

4. What written materials in _____ do you usually havein your home? (Hmong, Spanish)

Follow-up:

Adult books?

Newspaper?

Magazines?

5. How many ____ (Hmong, Spanish) children’s booksdo you have in your home?

6. What written materials in English do you usuallyhave in your home?

Follow-up:

Adult books?

Newspaper?

Magazines?

7. How many English children’s books do you have inyour home? __1–5 __6–10 ___11–20 __more than20

8. How many times a week do you read books with______?

9. What are the most important things you can do tohelp ______ learn to speak English?

10. What are the most important things you can do tohelp ______learn to read English?

11. How important is it for ______ to keep his/her abili-ty to speak_____?

12. How important is it for ______ to learn English?

Survey 21. How many people in your family speak some English?

2. How many people in your family speak no English?

3. How many times a week do you read books with______?

4. What language did you like best for reading books thatcame home from school?

5. What language of books did you choose to keep for yourchild?

6. Who read the books that came from school to _______most often?

7. Who also read the books that came from school to_______sometimes?

8. What did you like about the books coming home fromschool for reading with your child?

Appendix B

Family-Caregiver Surveys


Appendix C

List of Books Used in Program Sessions 1 and 2

Please note that these books are available in many different formats and that more than one edition of each bookmay have been used in this study.

Books for Weeks 1–6 Books for Weeks 7–12

Rosie’s Walk The Very Hungry CaterpillarPat Hutchins Eric Carle

The Snowy Day Mouse PaintEzra Jack Keats Ellen Stoll Walsh

The Napping House “Charlie Needs a Cloak”Audrey Wood Tomie dePaola

Whistle for Willie Noisy NoraEzra Jack Keats Rosemary Wells

Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Gilberto and the WindSome Monkeys, and Their Monkey Business Marie Hall EtsEsphyr Slobodkina

Corduroy The Little Red HenDon Freeman Paul Galdone

Appendix D

English Translations of Caregiver Responses to the Question “What Did You Like About theBooks Coming Home From School for ReadingWith Your Child?”

Specific Responses1. He would ask me about the books.2. The stories were funny and interesting.3. They were happy stories.4. The time we spend together when I was reading

with him.5. It helps David learn more than before.6. It was great. It was good for the children

to learn more.7. The books were funny and kept communication be-

tween our child and us.8. It was good because it is important for my daughter

to have reading most every day.9. It kept her busy at what she needs.

10. They motivated imagination and helped with reading.

11. I could practice with her.12. The stories were interesting. like very much, because

it helps my son tell about the story a little more andknow a little more about reading.

13. It kept her busy with reading stories instead of play-ing and wandering around.

14. Helps my son look at the words and read some words.

15. It helps my son know more and to know more abouthow to read.

16. Books did not have violence.17. The books that had animals.18. The books are interesting and she learned a lot from

the books.19. It helps my son know how to tell the story to me.20. The books are very important for my son. He learned

new things on each story.21. It kept my son busy and he would like to read to me.22. It helps my daughter and these are new books for

me too.23. I like that my daughter knows more about the story

from reading.24. It makes me feel better that my daughter is learning

on each day.

25. It kept my son reading books every two days.26. It helps my daughter to tell what the story is about.27. I like that the books tell a story and show pictures

that go with what it says in the book.

Nonspecific Responses28. I like everything about it.29. It helped my daughter read and write.30. I like everything about it. Sometime we go to

the library.31. We like a lot because it helps my son know how to

read more.

130 Reading Research Quarterly • 43(2)

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