Reading to young children in educational settings: a meta-analysis of recent research

This article reviews 10 studies, comprising 11 samples, of the effects of reading to young children in schools. The age of the children varied between 31-90 mo. Dependent variables were classified in 2 domains: oral language and reading skills. The combined effect size for the oral language domain was d = .63, and for the reading domain d = .41. Although these figures look promising, caution is needed because the empirical evidence appears to be meager. Not only is the number of studies small, but a critical analysis of the design of the studies generally reveals poor quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2000 APA, all rights reserved)