E-book as facilitator of vocabulary acquisition: support of adults, dynamic dictionary and static dictionary

We investigated the effects of three facilitators: adults’ support,
dynamic visual vocabulary support and static visual vocabulary support on
vocabulary acquisition in the context of e-book reading. Participants were 144
Israeli Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (aged 4–6) from middle SES neighborhoods.
The entire sample read the e-book without a dictionary once, and was pretested on
receptive word comprehension, expressive word explanation and word production
in story retelling. The sample was then randomly divided into four groups, each
reading an e-book three times, with: (1) adults’ vocabulary support; (2) dynamic
visual dictionary support; (3) static visual dictionary support; or (4) without support.
The participants were then posttested on the same measures. Children’s progress in
all measures was dependent on group, with adults’ support appearing as most
effective, dynamic dictionary as second, static dictionary as third, and no support as
least effective. However, the gains differed significantly only between some of the
groups, but were always significantly different between the group given adults’
support and the control group which was given no support. We conclude that
e-books can be used effectively to facilitate word meaning acquisition at different
levels. This contribution can be augmented by adults’ support and dynamic dictionary
support.