Teacher and bilingual children's talk turns during small-group discussions about more/less culturally relevant texts

We examine how attributes of children, teachers, books, and recent talk turns are related to children’s moment-by-moment articulations of comprehension (e.g., making an inference) during read-aloud book discussions. Two teachers and their four emergent bilingual children from refugee backgrounds (eight in total), taught in small groups, participated in the study. Statistical discourse analyses showed that specific previous teacher or child talk turns supported specific kinds of comprehension articulations (e.g., after a question checking for understanding, clarification, meaningful inference, meaningful opinion, or an unclear inference, a meaningful inference was more likely). Also, when books had higher ratings of cultural relevance, more information was articulated by children in the discussion. Results inform effective talk-turn design and instructional planning for read-aloud discussions. Copyright © 2022 AERA.