An exploration of the impact of picture book illustrations on the comprehension skills and vocabulary development of emergent readers

Abstract

The formal instruction process of teaching reading to emergent and beginning readers needs to incorporate a much more multimodal approach. People today, not only in America but in many other countries as well, are more graphically oriented than any other generation has ever been. Children in our society expect to experience pictures and images in almost everything they encounter. This graphic orientation needs to be taken advantage of and incorporated into the educational process in ways that can be beneficial to the learning environments of children in our schools. Reading programs need to forego one-dimensional teaching methods and learn how to expand their methodologies by taking advantage of various approaches that prove to be advantageous to the development of children. This study observed emergent readers as they demonstrated comprehension and retelling skills both with and without the aid of illustrations that would normally accompany a story. Observations and informal, descriptive assessment of indirect vocabulary development in relation to the books used in the study were conducted. These observations and assessments were directly linked to whether the studentparticipant was shown or not shown the illustrations of a story that was read to him or her. The study also described the personal impact that picture book illustrations had on students as they related to the processes of learning how to read. The study showed that students who visually experienced the illustrations accompanying a picture book had greater overall story comprehension and retelling ability than those who did not see the pictures of the story. It showed, as well, that the students who saw the pictures as a story was read to them had greater indirect vocabulary development than did those students who did not see the illustrations as the story was read aloud to them.

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