An Analysis of Supportive Strategies in Shared Reading Using an English Story

Abstract

The main purposes of this study are to find out the strategies which can be used to support children in a shared reading situation and investigate the ways of adopting them to English teaching with English stories. In order to do this, I designed and observed a shared reading between a child and her mother with an English story. Then the shared reading process was analyzed to identify the strategies offered by the child’s mother to support the child’s understanding of the English story. The findings of this study are mainly concerned with the interaction between the child and the mother. It also contains the results of the analysis which are related with input analysis, interaction analysis and functional analysis. The major strategies found in this study are similar to that of classroom teacher-student interaction such as translation, affirmation, comprehension check, repetition, specifying, translation request and paying attention. Although the data analysed in this study is derived from a case study and therefore difficult to generalize, these strategies may be able to help English learners feel more comfortable and learn better if applied appropriately.