Video modeling to enhance the conversation skills of preschool children who are at-risk for school failure

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of the video-modeling method on language comprehension skills of preschoolers who are at-risk for school failure. The setting for this research was a preschool classroom in a low socioeconomic school district in southern New Jersey. Baseline data on the amount of comprehension questions the participants answer correctly after a typical storytelling session were compared to the results of the amount of questions they answer correctly after exposure to the intervention. In addition, the students\u27 use of language, including mean length of utterance and vocabulary, was compared prior to and following the video intervention. The intervention consisted of the subjects watching a video model of a story being read aloud in the point-of-view modeling technique. The video also contained a model of two adults answering the comprehension questions in an interview format. The video was viewed by the subjects several times over the course of a few days. The subjects were asked the comprehension questions again and the results were recorded. The results were compared to the baseline. The results indicated that video modeling may have a positive increase on the language comprehension skills of at-risk preschoolers. The results showed an increase in on-task responses and vocabulary used to answer the questions. The implications for teaching and the development of language skills in young children at risk for learning difficulties were discussed