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The young generation, born into digital technologies and called Millennials or the Y-Generation, are raised in a world where everybody has a computer in their pockets (Hamari et al., 2014), and they are constantly engaged in digital activities. However, research on the impact of digital devices on learners’ educational performance and motivation is still an emerging field. This article aims to examine perceptions of the sixth-grade students in Turkey of their e-reading experiences on the basis of their personalized/gamified/PDF electronic reading practices in school and the influences of their perceptions on their reading comprehension and levels of motivation in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. The study follows a quasi-experimental approach with four treatment groups and a control group, involving 96 sixth-grade state school students in Turkey. The three treatment groups read in order from the personalized/gamified/PDF electronic reading for 5 weeks whereas the control group used printed guided reading program. The results indicate that EFL learners’ use of screen reading has the potential to increase reading motivation of the students. However, no significant difference was observed in their reading comprehension levels despite the use of different reading medium in control and experimental groups.

The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy with which the use of a speech generating device (Apple iPad TM with GoTalk Now TM application) versus a communication board promoted the production of two-symbols combinations (agent-action and attribute-entity combinations) by children limited speech within a shared story reading context. Four children between the ages of 6;8 (years; months) and 11;4 with severe motor speech disorders and a variety of developmental disabilities participated in the study. An adapted alternating treatment design was used. All four participants showed increased production of two-symbol combinations in both intervention conditions. The Wilcoxon ranked pairs test did not show differences between the conditions for any participant. The results suggest that symbol combination skills can effectively be taught using either AAC system. A preference assessment indicated that all participants preferred to use the speech generating device during shared story reading.

A meta-analysis was conducted on the effects of technology-enhanced stories for young children's literacy development when compared to listening to stories in more traditional settings like storybook reading. A small but significant additional benefit of technology was found for story comprehension (g+ = 0.17) and expressive vocabulary (g+ = 0.20), based on data from 2,147 children in 43 studies. When investigating the different characteristics of technology-enhanced stories, multimedia features like animated pictures, music, and sound effects were found beneficial. In contrast, interactive elements like hotspots, games, and dictionaries were found to be distracting. Especially for children disadvantaged because of less stimulating family environments, multimedia features were helpful and interactive features were detrimental. Findings are discussed from the perspective of cognitive processing theories.

In this study it is aimed to identify the views of mothers regarding interactive book-reading process to their children whose ages are between 46 and 62. In the survey the qualitative pattern was conducted. 46-62 months old children and their mothers were the participants of this qualitative study. A ‘semi-structured interview form’ was used to indicate the views of mothers regarding interactive book-reading process. After the first interviews a three-session seminar was held for the volunteered participating mothers. At first part of the seminar, the mothers were presented the language development of children and supporting this development with some samples. Then the impacts of book-reading on their development, the features of pictorial books, the criteria of choosing reading books some features of the books and the ways of interactive book reading to children and such issues were discussed. In the second and third parts of the seminar, practical interactive book-reading activities were applied. Following this, mothers were asked to read 3 books a week, totally 27 story-books within 9 weeks. For each reading book, mothers filled a form so called ‘story book verse form’. Lately the interviews were conducted with mothers after they read the books. According to the results, the findings of the second interview indicated that interactive book-reading has a positive impact on children’s development and mothers’ interactive book-reading skills. Bu araştırmada 46-62 ay aralığında olan çocukların annelerinin etkileşimli kitap okuma sürecine ilişkin görüşlerinin belirlenmesi amaçlamıştır. Araştırmada nitel desen kullanılmıştır. Araştırmaya okul öncesi eğitim kurumuna devam eden, 46-62 ay aralığında olan çocuklar ve anneleri katılmıştır. Çalışmada annelerin çocuklarına etkileşimli kitap okuma sürecine ilişkin görüşlerini belirlemek için “Yarı Yapılandırılmış Görüşme Formu” kullanılmıştır. Anneler ile ilk görüşmeler yapıldıktan sonra çalışmaya gönüllü olarak katılan annelere üç oturumdan oluşan seminer verilmiştir. Bu seminerin birinci oturumunda çocukların gelişim özellikleri ve gelişimini destekleme konusunda bilgiler örneklerle sunulmuş, daha sonra kitabın çocuğun gelişimi üzerindeki etkileri, çocuklara uygun resimli kitapların özellikleri ve çocuklara kitap seçerken dikkat edilmesi gereken noktalar, kitapların özellikleri ve çocuklara etkileşimli kitap okuma teknikleri hakkında bilgiler verilmiş olup, seminerin ikinci ve üçüncü oturumlarında etkileşimli kitap okuma teknikleri kitaplar üzerinden uygulamalı olarak ele alınmıştır. Seminerin ardından anneler çocuklarına haftada üç kitap olacak şekilde toplam dokuz hafta 27 öykü kitabını okumuşlardır. Her bir kitap okunduktan sonra anneler her bir kitap için Öykü Kitabı Bilgi Formunu doldurmuştur. Dokuz haftalık etkileşimli kitap okuma süreci sonrasında yeniden anneler ile görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Çalışmadan elde edilen sonuçlar incelendiğinde ikinci görüşmenin sonuçlarının etkileşimli kitap okuma sürecinin çocukların gelişimlerine ve annelerin etkileşimli kitap okuma becerilerine yansıdığı dikkati çekmektedir.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a shared reading intervention on narrative story comprehension and task engagement of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A single-case multiple baseline design was used, and three elementary-aged students with ASD participated in this study. The shared reading intervention included before, during, and after reading strategies (i.e., topic anticipation, dynamic reading, story retelling). Results of this study indicated that all participants demonstrated noticeable improvements in reading comprehension. Despite the longer duration of intervention sessions as compared to baseline sessions, participants showed similar or better task engagement with intervention. Improved reading outcomes were maintained at follow up for all participants. Implications for practical implementation and future research were discussed.

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book reading. A moderate effect size was found for oral language skills, implying that both quality of book reading in classrooms and frequency are important. Although teaching print-related skills is not part of interactive reading programs, 7% of the variance in kindergarten children's alphabetic knowledge could be attributed to the intervention. The study also shows that findings with experimenters were simply not replicable in a natural classroom setting. Further research is needed to disentangle the processes that explain the effects of interactive reading on children's print knowledge and the strategies that may help transfer intervention effects from researchers to children's own teachers.

Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their firstborn 13-month-old infants (N = 40) were video-recorded during everyday activities at home. Transcriptions and coding of mothers' speech to infants—time-locked to activities of feeding, grooming, booksharing, object play, and transition—revealed that the amount, diversity, pragmatic functions, and semantic content of maternal language systematically differed by activity. The activities of everyday life shape language inputs to infants in ways that highlight word meaning.

Theories of multimedia learning suggest that learners can form better referential connections when verbal and visual materials are presented simultaneously. Furthermore, the addition of auditory input in reading-while-listening conditions benefits performance on a variety of linguistic tasks. However, little research has been conducted on the processing of multimedia input (written text and images) with and without accompanying audio. Eye movements were recorded during young L2 learners’ (N=30) processing of a multimedia story text in reading-only and reading-while-listening conditions to investigate looking patterns and their relationship with comprehension using a multiple-choice comprehension test. Analysis of the eye-movement data showed that the presence of audio in reading-while-listening conditions allowed learners to look at the image more often. Processing time on text was related to lower levels of comprehension, whereas processing time on images was positively related to comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to compare the relative effects of word reading and story component interventions in developing reading comprehension of narrative texts with four students with mild levels of intellectual disability. A multielement design was used in this study. The findings revealed that the story component intervention was more effective and efficient than the word reading intervention in developing students' reading comprehension of narrative texts, and also indicated that both interventions were significantly effective in enabling subjects to answer literal questions. Only the story component intervention was significantly effective related to inferential questions. Finally, the findings revealed that students could generalize their reading comprehension skills to stories of different lengths.

Emergent-literacy skills are frequently taught within social interactions in preschool classrooms such as shared book reading. Children with impaired language and/or social engagement may have difficulty accessing these learning opportunities. Therefore, we sought to investigate the relationship between book-reading orientation during a teacher-led shared book reading activity and emergent-literacy skill development across three groups of preschool children; autism (n = 22), developmental language disorder (DLD; n = 23), and typical development (TD; n = 58). The children with autism demonstrated less book-reading orientation than their DLD and TD peers. Book-reading orientation was a significant predictor of residualized gains in print-concept knowledge and phonological awareness. Thus, book-reading orientation appears to play a critical role in preschooler’s emergent-literacy skill development.