Bazurto Martinez, Angie Xilena (2025) Links Between Parent-Child Storybook Reading and Children’s Vocabulary Acquisition and Writing Skills. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
In this study, 55 parents completed a Title Recognition Test (TRT) to measure their familiarity with children’s books, serving as a proxy for children’s exposure to storybooks at home. At school, children participated in three shared storybook reading sessions, with each session focusing on a new target vocabulary word. After each storybook reading at school, children were asked to write a response reflecting what they learned from the book. The story responses were later scored for lexical diversity (Type-Token Ratio) and invented spelling sophistication (using an adaptation from Gentry and Ouellette’s Monster Test, 2019). Vocabulary learning was also assessed by directly measuring target word definitions during a post-test activity. The findings revealed that children whose parents scored better on the TRT showed significantly greater lexical diversity in their responses. In addition, they demonstrated better learning of the target vocabulary introduced during the reading sessions at school. Conversely, children’s invented spelling was unrelated to their parents’ TRT scores. These results suggest that spelling may be more influenced by explicit instruction in letters and sounds, as found in previous research. Taken together, this study enriches our understanding of how parent-child shared reading experiences relate to children’s vocabulary use in writing. It also promotes free writing activities as valuable tools for assessing early literacy development.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Education |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Bazurto Martinez, Angie Xilena |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | Education |
| Date: | April 2025 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Martin-Chang, Sandra |
| ID Code: | 995450 |
| Deposited By: | Angie Bazurto Martinez |
| Deposited On: | 17 Jun 2025 16:41 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jun 2025 16:41 |
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