The examination of shared reading on language development of bilingual preschool children aged 60-72 monhts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of shared reading on the language development of 60 to 72-month-old bilingual preschool children. The study group of the research, which was formed as a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group, consisted of 24 children between the ages of 60-72 months, 12 in the experimental group and 12 in the control group, who were attending kindergartens in primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in two different villages in Bulanık district of Muş province. Prior to the program implementation, the experimental and control groups were subjected to the "Turkish Assessment Tool for Bilingual Children (İÇ-TDA)" developed by Temel et al. (2021) to assess the Turkish language development of bilingual children living in Turkey and the "Demographic Information Form" repared by the researcher. For the children in the experimental group, shared reading activities were carried out for a total of six weeks between May and June of the 2022-2023 academic year by reading two books a week. The control group was not interfered with during this period. At the end of the six-week implementation period, the researcher administered the "Turkish Assessment Tool for Bilingual Children (İÇ-TDA)" again for the children in both groups. According to the findings obtained from the study, it was concluded that the language development of the children who participated in the shared reading practice in both the experimental and control groups, who had similar language development levels before the practice, improved significantly compared to those who did not participate. In this context, it was concluded that shared reading is an effective method to support bilingual children language development. It is recommended that the study should be applied on children with different socioeconomic circumstances and in different age groups to examine varying effects.