Read More
- How Can Findings From E-Storybooks Help Your Students
- Why E-Storybooks?
- How Was the Research Carried Out?
- Evidence From E-Storybooks
- What Does This Mean for Teaching and Learning?
- Classroom Resources
- Useful Links & References
- Research Projects
- Research Team
Pre-school
Mother Tongue Language
- 102 Kindergarten-1 (K1) children
- 21 pre-schools
Classroom Resources
- E-Storybooks: Animated Electronic Storybook and Children’s Mother Tongue Development
- Raising a Bilingual Reader: Top Practical Tips for Parents
- Resources for Teachers
- Websites to choose eBooks
- Sun, Loh, & Roberts, 2019_Motion and Sound in Animated Storybooks for Preschoolers’ Visual Attention and Mandarin Language Learning: An Eye-Tracking Study With Bilingual Children
- NIE_research_brief_19-031_Animated Electronic Storybook and Mandarin Learning
- Exposure at home key to kids picking up mother tongue
Videos
Principal Investigator
Co-Principal Investigator
Knowledge Resource Bank
E-Storybooks
Animated Electronic Storybook and Preschoolers’ Mandarin Language Development
How Can Findings From E-Storybooks Help Your Students?
The E-Storybooks research revealed that:
- the enhanced digital books (with motion, camera movements, and sound) could facilitate children’s emergent language development, as compared to books that are accompanied by sound and narration, or narration only;
- such a reading format might be useful for child bilingual learners to acquire Mandarin;
- under the animated eBook condition, children appear to have improved productive vocabulary, context integration, and visual attention as well as improving story-retelling.
Why E-Storybooks?
Storybook reading is one of the most effective approaches for children to acquire new words and learn grammar in a meaningful context. However, for children who are beginning to learn a second language, they may benefit less from reading activities due to a lack in skills to do so. E-Storybooks (or eBooks) appear to be promising for them as such books may stimulate them in their different senses. This, in turn, could help them to understand a story as it is read aloud and accompanied with animation.
Against the backdrop of a multilingual society in Singapore with four official languages, such e-books could potentially be helpful. The number of electronic books borrowed by children from the Singapore National Library Board has increased over the years as such a format is favoured for its engaging elements. However, there has been a lack of research on how these eBooks may influence bilingual children’s language learning and whether children could ultimately benefit from exposure to them.
How Was the Research Carried Out?
E-Storybooks explores the effectiveness of using animated e-storybooks on preschoolers’ Chinese language development and acquisition. It compares children’s vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in four conditions:
- animated stories with motion and sound;
- corresponding static stories, with sound and softcopy printed illustrations;
- corresponding static stories with softcopy illustration only;
- a control condition (no reading exposure)
Eye tracking was also used to measure visual attention.
The animated and static eBooks were the same as those used in another study but Chinese language was the language studied. The three prize-winning children’s stories are – Little Kangaroo (Genechten, 2007), Cycling With Grandpa (Boonen, 2004) and Imitators (Veldkamp, 2006).
Besides eye-tracking as mentioned above, demographic surveys, language proficiency tests, cognitive skills were also used to investigate the study.
Learn more about the research methodology:
Motion and Sound in Animated Storybooks for Preschoolers’ Visual Attention and Mandarin Language Learning: An Eye-Tracking Study with Bilingual Children
Evidence from E-Storybooks
Children exposed to the animated e-storybooks performed better than the other children in this study in the following aspects:
- having longer attention span on the story: this may suggest deeper processing of details in the story, which might lead to better learning results.
- children were asked to complete a sentence with the target word missing while seeing its related illustration on the screen. More target words were produced by children exposed to animated e-storybooks, indicating as well that these children could better remember these words than their peers.
- when the children retold the three stories using still pictures of the stories, more details were also produced by these children than their peers.
What Does This Mean for Teaching and Learning?
- Animated eBooks have been found to be beneficial to children’s Mandarin language learning compared to static versions
- eBook developers, parents, educators and policymakers should be aware of this as they select relevant materials for young children’s reading so as to promote their early mother tongue language learning.
- A list of e-book recommendations can be downloaded from this site for sharing with educators and parents.
Related Links
- Research Brief Series, No. 19-031, “Animated Electronic Storybook and Mandarin Learning”
- NIEWS #115 March-May Issue (2021): Using Animated Storybooks To Enhance Preschoolers’ Chinese Language Learning
Further Readings
For educators interested in the research methodology behind the use of animated E-storybooks for Mandarin language learning, you may refer to:
- Sun, H. (2021, July). Motion and Sound in Animated Storybooks for Preschooler’s Visual Attention and Mandarin Language Learning: An Eye-Tracking Study with Bilingual Children. Poster presented at 15th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, online
- Sun*, H., & Bus, A. (2021, July). Eye tracker and Skin Conductance in Bilingual Children’s Heritage Language Reading Process. Paper presented at Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, online
- Sun*, H. (2019). Bilingual children’s Mandarin language and literacy environment at home and their Mandarin receptive language and social-emotional skills: one stone for two birds? Frontier in Psychology.
- Sun*, H., Loh, J. Y., & Charles, A. C. (2019). Motion and sound in animated storybooks for preschooler’s total fixation time and mandarin language learning: an eye-tracking study with Singaporean bilingual children. AERA Open 5(2), 1-19
- Sun, H. (2019, September). How animated eBooks could help children learn their mother tongue better? Evidence from an eye-tracking study. Paper presented at Asian Festival of Children’s Content, Singapore
- Sun, H. (2018, October). The efficacy of animated e-books in fostering Singaporean kindergartener’s Mandarin lexical learning. Presentation at ABC’18: a Showcase of Infancy Research in the Asia-Pacific, Singapore.
Research Project
Research Team
To learn more about this research, please contact the Principal Investigator, Dr Sabrina SUN He at he.sun@nie.edu.sg .
Principal Investigator
Dr Sabrina SUN He, Centre for Research in Child Development (CRCD), Office of Education Research (OER), NIE
Co-Principal Investigators
- Dr O’BRIEN Beth Ann, Head, Early and Middle Childhood Research – CRCD, OER, NIE
- Prof Adriana Gerarda BUS, University of Leiden
Collaborators
- Prof Kerry LEE, formerly of NIE
- Dr Roberto SANTIAGO de Roock, formerly of NIE
- Prof CHEUNG Wai Leung Mike, National University of Singapore (NUS)
- A/P CHEONG Siew Ann, Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
Research Assistant
- Ms Yvonne MOH Cui Yun, CRCD, NIE
- Ms LOH Jie Ying, CRCD, NIE
Acknowledgments
E-Storybooks (Animated Electronic Storybook and Children’s Mother Tongue Development: Tracing the Process and the Outcome with Eyetracking) was funded by the Education Research Funding Programme, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (project no. OER 13/16 HS). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE.
This knowledge resource was written by Ms Lorraine Ow and Ms Shruthilaya Ramachandran with edits and approval from Dr Sabrina Sun He as of 17 June 2021; updated by Ms Monica Lim on 1 July 2022.
