A comparison between preschool children’s verbal participation during the shared reading of a wordless and a text-based rendition of Aesop’s fable The Lion and the Mouse

This study compared the story-focused language of two groups of 40 Chinese preschool children who separately read and discussed a wordless and a text-based version of one Aesop’s fable with their educators. Drawing on systemic functional linguistic theory, the children’s language was analyzed according to their semantic function: label, describe, infer, compare, generalize and explain. The results showed that 3–4-year-olds generated fewer story-focused clauses than 4–5-year-olds in both book reading genres, yet the gap was much narrower in wordless booking reading where the younger children were more engaged in story-focused discussion. The younger children used more ‘infer’ and ‘explain’ clauses during wordless book reading, whereas the older children used more ‘describe’ clauses. The situation was reversed for the children reading the text-based book. These findings have implications for educators to optimize the learning opportunities afforded to young children during shared reading, considering the influence of book types on different age groups.