Early Reading Instruction - Big Books in the ESL Classroom*

Abstract

Big Books are magnified or enlarged versions of children's books, usually narratives and are considered to be one of the most effective ways of getting young children involved with print (Strickland and Morrow, 1990). Largely inspired by the shared book experience of Don Holdaway (1979) in New Zealand, Big Books as a tool for early reading instruction in English have become well-established over the past few years. The aim of this article is to study the Big Book approach and to see how well it can be applied to the teaching of reading in English to non-native learners of the language.