Nursery World - Interactive reading found to boost early language development by seven months

Encouraging children to engage with pictures, texts and ask questions during story time can boost their early language development by up to seven months, according to new research.

The EEF says that 'interactive reading' can help boost children's language development by up to seven months, PHOTO: Adobe Stock

The Education Endowment Foundation’s updated Early Years Toolkit, which summarises findings from the ‘best available’ international evidence, shows that interactive reading and teaching and modelling vocabulary can have a ‘very high impact’ of up to seven months on children’s learning, for a ‘very low cost’.

Of the ten topics included in the Toolkit, each is accompanied by an ‘average impact’ in months progress, alongside information on cost and strength of the evidence base. Parental engagement, for example, can boost children’s learning by an average of five months and giving children extra hours of early years provision can help them progress by up to three months.

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