Clarification strategies in joint book reading

Abstract

Within joint book reading, parents and children are provided with many opportunities to interact verbally. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of clarification requests and responses within such an episode. Five kindergarten children were read a traditional fairy tale by their mothers. The dialogue evolving from this experience was categorized into two main focuses - clarifying requests (form and function) and responses. Results indicated that whereas parents and children did not differ greatly in the nature of the function of their requests, they did differ in the form used to express requests for clarification. Differences for responses were also noted to both groups.