UROP Project
language acquisition, early childhood, text corpus, shared book reading
Research Mentor: Rebecca Vasile, she/her/hers
Department, College, Affiliation: School of Teacher Education, Education, Health, and Human Sciences
Contact Email: rvasile@fcrr.org
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:
Department, College, Affiliation: School of Teacher Education, Education, Health, and Human Sciences
Contact Email: rvasile@fcrr.org
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:
Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors
Project Location: 2010 Levy Avenue, Suite 100 Tallahassee FL 32310
Research Assistant Transportation Required: The Seminole Express comes to IN (Innovation Park) where the lab is located during the Fall and Spring semesters. Remote or In-person: In-person
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5,
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link: Not participating in the Roundtable
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors
Project Location: 2010 Levy Avenue, Suite 100 Tallahassee FL 32310
Research Assistant Transportation Required: The Seminole Express comes to IN (Innovation Park) where the lab is located during the Fall and Spring semesters. Remote or In-person: In-person
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5,
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link: Not participating in the Roundtable
Project Description
The current study builds on an existing body of research that states that the language in books is unique when compared to the everyday speech children hear (Cameron-Faulkner and Noble, 2013; Dawson et al., 2021; Montag et al., 2015). While these studies have shed important light on the unique contributions of book language, there are important weaknesses with these studies that are worth considering. The first one being the selection of books being examined. All three corpora used picture books that came from parent recommendations, book review websites, and librarian recommendations. This selection process lacks ecological validity that would come from parent or teacher reports or observations of books they had read to their child(ren). The final weakness of the current corpus work with early childhood picture books is the lack of examination of genre and how this impacts the lexical diversity of a book. If a larger goal of this work is to better understand the stimuli children experience and how it influences their learning, we need to analyze stimuli that most closely resembles what children experience. This study addresses both limitations by analyzing books that we observed early childhood teachers reading in their classrooms and by including genre in analyses of book language.Research Tasks: Data collection: here data collection consists of transcribing the text in books, scanning the books for later reference, and collecting secondary data about the books (i.e., author, publisher, publication year, award status, etc).
Skills that research assistant(s) may need: It is recommended that the student working on this project is detail oriented, self directed, and has effective time management skills.
Mentoring Philosophy
“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself” - Oprah Winfrey. I find mentorship to be the most rewarding part of my work. Mentorship is important because it provides a gateway to more information that a mentee may otherwise not know about. Mentors can actively be the person to either help push on a door or even open it wide for the right person. I see part of the job of mentoring as helping my mentees figure out more about themselves in the process of working together. This is true whether the mentee is interested in my work or a completely different path.Generally, I want to provide an open, inclusive, and flexible environment for my mentees. This means building a relationship based on trust that includes open and effective communication that fosters independence and promotes professional development. To help achieve a successful mentorship relationship, I will make myself readily available, maintain open and honest communication along with consistent meetings to ensure that we are on the same page with expectations and goals.