Pixel Is The New Print. How Electronic Books Support Emergent Literacy: A Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of this case study was to investigate how electronic books (ebooks) motivate and engage an emergent reader, as well as how ebooks support decoding and comprehension. Qualitative data was collected from one second grade female student. The results of the study indicated the participant displayed a strong preference to using ebooks over traditional paper books. The participant was highly motivated to use ebooks due to their novelty. The participant’s engagement was negatively effected by the technology, displaying more off task and distracting behaviors when reading from an ebook compared to a traditional paper text. The narration and pronunciation features ebooks offer deemed beneficial to the participant’s decoding skills. The narration feature of the ebooks also increased the participant’s reading comprehension compared to traditional paper text. It is recommended that teachers and educators must determine what features of ebooks are appropriate and effectively incorporate them into thoughtfully designed literacy instruction for each student, and must provide explicit instruction and model how to use the ebooks appropriately in order for student’s literacy skills to be positively affected.