What reading aloud does

Reading aloud gives children words that everyday talk rarely does, and how you read matters, not just how often. Talking as you read, by asking questions, listening and building a little on the answers, brings small but real gains in language. Read the same book again when they ask, which helps them learn its new words, make a story part of bedtime, and keep reading after they can read for themselves.

In the 1980s Donald Hayes and Margaret Ahrens counted rare words, the ones outside the 10,000 most common in English, in everything from newspapers to cartoons. Children’s books had 30.9 in every 1,000 words. University graduates talking with friends or their spouses managed 17.3, and prime-time adult television 22.7. Mister Rogers and Sesame Street, gentle and much loved, had 2.0.¹

One more figure from that count is worth knowing. Books for preschoolers, at 16.3, came in a touch below graduates’ conversation: among children’s books, the richer language belongs to those for slightly older children. Those books are often harder than a new reader can manage alone, which is one good reason to keep reading aloud after a child can read by themselves.¹

Why read books when we talk to our children all day?

In 2015 Jessica Montag and her colleagues compared the text of 100 picture books with the same number of words of ordinary talk to young children. The books held 1.72 times as many different words.² For a typical child read one book a day, the authors estimated, book text is only about 3% of the language they hear, yet it “may be disproportionately important for children’s language development.”²

One study argued that the difference lies between formal and informal language more than between print and speech.³ It looked only at English, but we think a story told in rich, careful language, in isiXhosa or Afrikaans as much as English, may do some of the same work (more in many languages, one bedtime).

What is the “million word gap”?

In 2019 researchers at Ohio State estimated what a book a day adds up to. A child read one picture book a day hears about 78,000 words a year from books, and about 296,660 by their fifth birthday. At five books a day, a child hears an estimated 1.4 million more than one who is never read to.^{4, 5}

In the US national data the team used, about a quarter of caregivers never read with their children.⁴ The word totals are modelled rather than counted: they rest on 60 popular library books (the board books averaged 140 words, the picture books 228), survey answers about how often families read, and the printed words alone, leaving out the talk around them, where much of the learning happens.⁵

Does it matter how you read, or only how often?

In 1988 Grover Whitehurst’s team in New York taught mothers of two-year-olds a more conversational way of reading, in two half-hour sessions, to use for four weeks. A comparison group read just as often, in the usual way.

By the developers’ own summary, the children whose mothers changed how they read were about 6 months ahead on a test of naming words and 8.5 months ahead on a test of expressive language, gains still there nine months later. (The “months” are language ages on a test, not months of life.) Their understanding of words gained no more than the comparison group’s.^{6, 7} It was a small study of well-off families, but its design is the lesson: the same amount of reading, done differently.

Whitehurst called it dialogic reading, and put the idea simply: “No one can learn to play the piano just by listening to someone else play.”⁸

Its basic move is PEER. You prompt the child to say something about the page, evaluate the answer, expand it a little, and repeat the prompt so they try the richer version. In his example you point to a fire truck and ask, “What is this?” The child says “truck”, and you answer “That’s right” (evaluate), “it’s a red fire truck” (expand), “can you say fire truck?” (repeat).⁸

From the second reading of a book on, he suggests PEER on nearly every page, and reading a little less of the printed text each time: “Leave more to the child.” His five kinds of prompt spell CROWD:⁸

• Completion: leave a blank to fill, in rhyming or repeating books. “I think I’d be a glossy cat. A little plump but not too ____.”
• Recall: ask what happened in a book they know. “What happened when the beanstalk grew?”
• Open-ended: invite them to tell you about the picture. “Tell me what’s happening in this picture.”
• Wh- questions: what, where, when, why or how. “Why do you think she’s hiding?”
• Distancing: link the book to their own life. “Where have you seen a mountain like this?”

Whitehurst keeps recall and distancing prompts mainly for four- and five-year-olds, and adds the best advice of all: “Keep it light. Don’t push children with more prompts than they can handle happily. Keep it fun.”⁸

How much difference does it make?

A real one, but smaller than the founding study suggests. In 2007 the US education department’s evidence service rated its effect on preschoolers’ oral language as the equivalent of moving a typical child up 19 percentile points, on average, with no discernible effect on hearing the sounds in words.⁹ A 2020 review of 19 randomised trials, with 2,594 children aged 1 to 6, found that training parents to share books gave children gains its authors call small, and changed the parents’ reading a great deal. Under an hour of training did little.¹⁰

And when a careful 2019 review compared shared reading with other engaging activities, its advantage all but vanished.¹¹ Reading together is one very good thing to do with a child; it isn’t magic.

What happened when carers in Khayelitsha learned to share books this way?

Some of the best evidence is from Cape Town. In a randomised trial in Khayelitsha, carers of 91 babies aged 14 to 16 months either joined eight weekly group sessions, taught in isiXhosa by two women from the community, or were in a comparison group. The carers included 13 grandmothers and four fathers. At the start, none shared books with their child regularly.¹²

Afterwards, trained carers reported that their babies understood more words (about 56 against 44 on the checklist) and could understand and say far more (about 26 against 10), and the babies’ attention improved markedly. The word counts were carers’ reports; on the researchers’ own direct test, the difference fell just short of significance.¹² A second analysis found the change was in the carers: they became more sensitive and responsive while sharing books, and that explained the babies’ gains.¹³

They had been taught to let the baby hold the book and turn the pages, to point and name, to ask “Where is the…?” before “What is this?”, and to share a book for at least 10 minutes a day.¹² That is most of the first list at the end of this page.

A larger trial there in 2021 involved 140 caregivers of toddlers aged 21 to 28 months. Half met weekly in a church hall, in a programme that began with “using a lively voice” and built up to talking about characters’ feelings, while the other half waited their turn. The children gained in language and attention on several measures, and caregivers became more sensitive and less verbally and psychologically harsh, though behaviour problems didn’t change.¹⁴

Not every trial worked. In 2024 a trial in the Western Cape’s Drakenstein study, with 122 children aged about three and a half, found no difference four months later; its authors suggest starting earlier.¹⁵

The habit is spreading, though: in 2023, 52% of South African adults who live with children said they read with them, up from about 35% in 2016 (the surveys’ questions weren’t identical).¹⁶ The wider picture, from how few homes have picture books to what is working in classrooms, is in reading in South Africa.

Do bedtime stories help children sleep?

Bedtime routines do, and a story is one of the parts sleep experts recommend. The best-known trial, in 2009, gave 405 mothers of children aged 7 to 36 months a three-step routine: a bath, a massage, then quiet cuddling or a lullaby, lights out within 30 minutes of the bath. Within two weeks the children fell asleep faster and woke less, and the mothers’ mood improved. Reading wasn’t one of the steps, and Johnson & Johnson, which supplied the bath products, funded the study.¹⁷

The evidence about stories themselves is a correlation, but a long one. In a US study that followed 4,274 children from birth, those whose bedtime routines at three involved words (reading, singing or storytelling) slept longer and scored higher on verbal tests at five, after allowing for family background.¹⁸ And when 59 experts agreed in 2020 on a good bedtime routine for ages 2 to 8, their list included “reading or sharing a book with children or simply telling a story”. In their scoring a book is worth 15 points out of 100 and brushing teeth 35, which may have something to do with the panel being led by a dental research team.¹⁹

Why do they want the same book again, and should you give in?

Give in. In a 2011 experiment, three-year-olds who heard the same story three times in a week learned its new words; children who heard three different stories with the same new words, just as often, “failed to learn any of the new words.”²⁰ Writing for children in 2017, the study’s lead author and a colleague explained: “it is easier to learn new words from stories when you have heard the story before and know what is going to happen.”²¹ The limits of that evidence are in the science of starring.

Questions can grow with rereading. With three-year-olds, easy questions about a new word when it first appeared, then harder ones later, helped them define the word better.²² After a few readings, let them try finishing the lines. Several of our books are built for exactly this: they have a refrain, and the page for parents at the back suggests pausing before it, as in Up the Beanstalk and Second to the Right. The pause before each refrain is Whitehurst’s completion prompt; the books themselves haven’t been tested yet, being new.

Does it matter how you sound, and whether you point to the words?

Read with feeling. Among 92 children of about four and three-quarters, those who heard an expressive recording of a story answered specific questions about it better than those who heard a flat reading, though their free retelling was no better.²³ That study didn’t test character voices as such, but voices are an easy way to put the expression in.

The printed words are a different matter. Eye-tracking shows that preschoolers barely look at them: in one study, only 5 to 6% of children’s gaze fell on the text. When adults pointed to the words or talked about them, the children looked at the print significantly more.²⁴ That small habit counts. In a classroom trial with 550 four-year-olds, teachers who read aloud two or four times a week for 30 weeks and briefly drew attention to print (pointing to words, naming letters) had pupils who read and spelled better for two years afterwards.²⁵

Reading aloud is not phonics, and doesn’t need to be. In a five-year Canadian study of 168 children, being read to was linked with vocabulary and listening, and later with reading in Grade 3; parents teaching letters and words was linked with word reading in Grade 1.²⁶ Stories build the language; a little letter talk builds the code. The second road is in first sounds and phonics.

Does it matter who does the reading?

Less than you might think. Pooling 38 studies, a 2018 review concluded that “how stories are read is more important than who reads them.”²⁷ So Gogo counts, and so does a dad, though the research has barely looked at dads: in 46 studies of dialogic reading, 80 to 100% of the adults reading were women in all but one.²⁸

What there is, is encouraging. In 430 low-income US families, about 55% of fathers read to their toddlers at least weekly, and fathers’ reading at two and three predicted their children’s language at three and their knowledge of books before school.²⁹ The one book-sharing trial built for fathers at the time, with 126 Spanish-speaking dads in the US, improved their parenting and their children’s language;³⁰ in 2021 the Khayelitsha team called the lack of others “a major gap”.¹⁴

In South Africa, the 2024 Thrive by Five survey found that just under half (49%) of four-year-olds at early learning programmes had lived in the same home as their father during the past six months.³¹ A grandfather, an uncle or a godfather can be the man with the book.

When should you stop reading aloud?

Later than many families do. In 1985 the US Commission on Reading concluded, in its report Becoming a Nation of Readers:

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.

The same passage goes on, in a line quoted less often and more modern in spirit: “The benefits are greatest when the child is an active participant, engaging in discussions about stories, learning to identify letters and words, and talking about the meanings of words.”³² In fairness, a 1995 review found that the measured effect of being read to seems to shrink once children can read for themselves.³³ The case for reading to a six- to eight-year-old is enjoyment, stories harder than they can manage alone, and the talk.

Families tend to stop early. In a survey for the publisher HarperCollins in the UK in December 2024, only 36% of five- to seven-year-olds were read to regularly, and only 40% of parents said reading aloud was “fun for me”.³⁴ Children’s enjoyment matters too: in one small US study of 61 low-income families, children’s own interest in reading carried the link between how well their parents read with them and the children’s vocabulary.³⁵ And in a survey by the publisher Scholastic, 40% of American six- to eleven-year-olds who were no longer read to wished their parents had kept going.³⁶

America’s paediatricians now advise reading together from birth (in the neonatal intensive care unit, when possible), and favour print books for young children “because digital books do not foster equivalent parent-child interactions.”³⁷ We make an ebook as well as printed books, so we’ll say it plainly: for reading together, we’d reach for the printed copy.

How to do it tonight, by age

The programmes in the research usually asked for 5 to 15 minutes a day, and no study has found the ideal amount,²⁸ so a few minutes most days is a fine start. Put the phone away, too: in a small study of 22 mothers and their four-year-old daughters, mothers who were more distracted by their phones tended to read less interactively.³⁸

Ages 2 to 3

• Let them hold the book and turn the pages. Point to things and name them.
• Ask “Where is the dog?” for words they know, and “What is this?” once they can say them. When they answer, add a little: “Yes, a dog. A big, muddy dog.”
• Point to a pictured animal’s nose, then theirs, then yours.
• Leave the last word of a rhyme or refrain for them to fill in.
• Use a lively voice, and talk about how the characters feel: “She looks scared. Why?”

Ages 4 to 5

• Use PEER: ask, say whether they’re right, add a little, and ask again.
• Read it again, with harder questions as it gets familiar: “Why did he do that?”, “Have you ever felt like that?”
• Now and then, point to a word, especially their name, and say the sound it starts with: “Naledi starts with nnn.”

Ages 6 to 8

• Keep reading to them, and choose stories a little harder than they can read alone.
• Let them choose: in Scholastic’s US survey, 91% of children aged 6 to 17 agreed that their favourite books are the ones they picked out themselves.³⁶
• Stop at a cliffhanger and ask what happens next, and why.

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