The Shared Book Approach

The Shared Book Approach is the sharing of motivating stories using enlarged story books with good illustrations. This approach capitalizes on the universal love one has for stories. SBA stimulates interest, creativity, fun and reinforces positive attitudes towards books and reading.  This approach is based on what is known about children who begin to read early and with little difficulty. These children have parents or other relatives read to them frequently from young. As the story is read to them, children’s curiosity is aroused and they begin to ask questions about the illustrations and the print which provide ample opportunities for teaching and discussion. It also allows children to get used to books as well as to learn a great deal about print and thereby reinforce reading readiness skills which lead to independent reading.

The Language Experience Approach is based on the rationale that a Shared Experience can be

•              thought about
•              talked about
•              written down
•              read and reread

This approach integrates the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Through a Language Experience activity, children’s curiosity and interest are stimulated and they begin to think, to talk about the experience which the teacher captures in print. This then can be read and reread.

This approach assumes that the pupils can think and speak in English. Although children can think about a shared experience in their own language, many non-English speaking pupils are unable to do so. Thus the teacher will have to first teach the English words and structures that the pupils need to translate their thoughts into speech and writing.

The learning of English is a complex and confusing task. In order to simplify it, English is often broken up into listening, oral English, reading, writing, spelling etc. This hinders children from seeing that the four language skills are related. The Language Experience approach reinforces the four language skills and helps the pupils learn to use both oral and written English more actively and efficiently.