Teaching Style and Storybook Format: Effects on Vocabulary Development and Story Comprehension in Young EAL Learners

The increasing integration of digital storybooks into early childhood education, alongside growing linguistic diversity in classrooms, raises important questions about how print and digital texts support language development in children learning English as an Additional Language (EAL). While shared print reading is well established as a context for vocabulary and comprehension development, evidence regarding the educational value of e-books remains mixed, particularly for multilingual learners. Emerging research suggests that learning outcomes may depend less on book medium and more on pedagogical factors, especially adult scaffolding and teaching style. This study examined (a) whether an “ideal”, developmentally appropriate e-book offers advantages over print books for EAL children’s vocabulary development and story comprehension, and (b) how two teaching styles, interactive (dialogic) and performance-based, differentially support receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and story comprehension. Sixty EAL children aged 3–7 years participated in a 2 (book format: e-book versus print) × 2 (teaching style: interactive versus performance) field experiment conducted in an English-medium school in Cyprus. Children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and participated in four shared reading sessions involving two storybooks, with each story read twice. Outcomes included receptive and expressive vocabulary, implicit and explicit story comprehension, and standardised language proficiency (PLS-5 UK). Analyses controlled for baseline language ability and age to account for developmental variability across the sample. Book format alone did not significantly affect receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, or overall language proficiency. However, print books significantly outperformed e-books on explicit story comprehension. Teaching style emerged as a stronger predictor of learning outcomes: the interactive approach significantly enhanced expressive vocabulary and implicit story comprehension compared to the performance style, whereas no differences were observed for receptive vocabulary or standardised language scores. No interaction effects were found between book format and teaching style. These findings indicate that for young EAL learners, how stories are taught matters more than which medium is used. Interactive adult scaffolding plays a critical role in supporting expressive language and higher-order comprehension across both print and digital formats. The results highlight the importance of prioritising pedagogical design and teacher mediation when integrating digital storybooks into multilingual early childhood classrooms.