Literacy news
Repeatedly reading the same book to toddlers helps them learn new words
4 Mar 2013
New research suggests that repetition is the best way for toddlers to learn new words. Dr Jessica Horst, of the University of Sussex’s WORD Lab devised an experiment to check how quickly three-year-olds could recognise and recall six new words.
The children were visited three times in a week at their homes.
One group heard the same story three times back-to-back each time and another was read three different stories. All had the same amount of new words which appeared the same number of times.
When researchers returned a week later, they found the children who heard the same story over and over had typically learned 3.6 of the new words. Those that were exposed to a variety of stories remembered only 2.6. They also noted the ‘repetition’ group learned at a faster rate than those in the ‘variety’ group.
The findings back previous research by Dr Horst that pointed to the benefits of familiarity:
In the original study, we found that children who hear the same stories again and again learn words better than the kids who get the different stories.
In the follow-up study I looked at how this worked over time. We have seen the same effect - that kids actually learn better when the information that they are not even trying to learn is repeated.
Read more at the Daily Mail.
