Dialogic Reading to Promote the Underprivileged Pre-School Children's Expressive Language Ability

Abstract

Background: Indonesia's children from low socioeconomic backgrounds have been facing challenges in terms of literacy and language development. One of the possible reasons is that they are not used to receiving meaningful early reading interventions such as shared reading during their preschool attendance. This phenomenon has brought to light the urgency of having an early intervention that can accommodate Indonesia's very diverse linguistic and cultural context- a multilingual and multicultural country. Methodology: This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method research design. The first phase was conducted in a quantitative one-group pre-experiment with pre-and post-test design. In the second phase, a qualitative case study involved classroom observation and informal interviews with the teacher and children. Findings: The MLU calculation showed that the pre-test mean score was 2.35, median score was 2.20, and the standard deviation was 0.53. The post-test mean was 3.72, median 3.18, and the standard deviation 1.38. The phase examined how teachers implemented dialogic reading and how children felt about it. Conclusion: This current study has offered insight that the teacher could implement the dialogic reading activity in a typical Indonesian preschool setting. The dialogic reading activity also contributed significantly to the development of children’s expressive language ability. Originality: The findings of this study have indicated dialogic reading potentials in terms of promoting children’s language development and, just as importantly, sparking children’s joy of reading since their early years of formal education. Therefore, it is suggested that early childhood educators and parents collaborate to incorporate dialogic reading activities into their daily literacy practices at schools and at home.