The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the interactive digital reading program ePrent&ABC on the development of vocabulary depth and phonological awareness during the early...Show moreThe purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the interactive digital reading program ePrent&ABC on the development of vocabulary depth and phonological awareness during the early literacy development period. The program ePrent&ABC combines digital living storybooks with theory-based instruction methods for learning new vocabulary to enhance the development of early literacy. A total of 90 Dutch kindergarten students aged between 53 and 70 months (M = 62,22 months, SD = 4,825) participated in this study. Over the course of five weeks, teachers read five different Dutch storybooks four times each during group reading. During each reading, new words and phonemes were taught to the kindergartners using different forms of consolidation, except for in the last condition (condition A) in which no new words were taught. During the other conditions (B: semantics; C: print knowledge; D: phonological awareness), eight new words per storybook were taught and measured the next week to investigate the growth in vocabulary depth and phonological awareness. Results show that the use of ePrent&ABC causes more growth in phonological awareness than regular storybooks. There is a significant result when comparing children with a high receptive vocabulary and children with a low receptive vocabulary (p<.001, ηp2= .205). Children with a high vocabulary have a statistically significant higher mean on phonological awareness than children with a low vocabulary. When looking at vocabulary depth, no statistically significant results were found. This result can be attributed to faults in the instructional methods and measuring materials of vocabulary depth. Even though ePrent&ABC has shown no effect on vocabulary depth, certain working aspects like phonological awareness instruction can be used to aid children with literacy difficulties during primary school years. Keywords: early literacy development, phonological awareness, vocabulary depth, digital storybooks, ePrent&ABC, vocabulary consolidationShow less
