Teachers and parents usually pay attention to the pictures when they read storybooks to preschool children. But a new study suggests that paying attention to the words and letters on the page may lead to better readers.
The two-year study compared children who were read to this way in class with children who were not. Those whose teachers most often discussed the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding. These results were found one year and even two years later.
Shayne Piasta, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, was an author of the study. She says most preschool teachers would find this method manageable and would need only a small change in the way they teach. They already read storybooks in class. The only difference would be increased attention to the printed text.
Ms Piasta says if you get children to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling. But she says research suggests that very few parents and teachers do this in a systematic(系统的) way.
More than 300 children aged four and five were observed in classrooms in Ohio and Virginia. The children came from poor families and were below average in their language skills. This put them at risk of reading problems later. For 30 weeks, the children took part in a program called Project STAR. It tests the short-term and long-term results of reading regularly to preschool children in their classrooms.
There’re different ways that adults can talk to children about print. They can point to a letter and discuss it, and even trace the shape with a finger. They can point out a word, “This is a ‘dog’.” They can discuss how the words tell the story. And they can talk about the organization of the print—for example, showing how words are written left to right in English.
小题1:According to the text, Shayne Piasta _______.
A．worked in a middle school
B．didn’t attend the research at all
C．liked kids to be educated through words
D．hoped to increase kids’ interest through pictures小题2:According to the text, Project STAR ____.
A．focused on adults’ education
B．was to study reading results
C．was mainly conducted at home
D．tested kids with good reading skills小题3:What is the last paragraph mainly about?
A．Why words have meanings.
B．Different expressions of words.
C．How words are spelled differently.
D．Ways of teaching about print.小题4: The text may appear in ____.
A．Child Development
B．Daily Technology
C．International Affairs
D．Health Development