Emergent Readers’ Social Interaction Styles and Their Comprehension Processes During Buddy Reading

To examine the relations between emergent readers’ social interaction styles and their comprehension processes, we adapted sociocultural and transactional views of learning and reading, and conducted statistical discourse analysis of 1,359 conversation turns transcribed from 14 preschoolers’ 40 buddy reading events. Results show that interaction styles were differentially related to comprehension processes: the collaborative style was related to the use of the most comprehension processes, some comprehension processes were related to tutor and tutee interaction styles, and the parallel interaction style was not related to any comprehension processes. The findings inform early childhood teachers how to foster productive social interactions during buddy reading in order to facilitate emergent readers’ comprehension processes.