Supporting early oral literacy. Explicit and implicit instruction for the development of narratives in Preschool children

This project aims to study the effects of two theoretically motivated oral interventions, SEOL and READ, to meet the needs of Swedish preschool children.

We take a holistic and communicative approach to support oral literacy in Preschool targeting the production and comprehension of narratives as a key competence for subsequent reading and writing development. We also aim to examine the role of instruction from a theoretical perspective - explicit versus implicit instruction.

Children will be assessed individually through both pre- and post-intervention. Multilingual Assessment Instruments for Narratives; (MAIN) will be used for storytelling and story-retelling tasks.

We also do video- recorded observations to study the interaction between the participants and the local preschool context.

The hypothesis is that both interventions will gain literacy development as compared to “business-as-usual, but that the explicit intervention SEOL will benefit narrative skills more than the contrast implicit intervention READ, among children with Swedish as a second language.

The study takes departure from a socio-cognitive approach to language learning and acquisition, ideas of scaffolding and cooperative communicative motives.

The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, and intervention design also examining the role of instruction - explicit versus implicit instruction - is as far as we can tell innovative in a Swedish preschool context.