A study of parents reading aloud habits with research on reading aloud applied to research-based practices for promoting students’ intrinsic motivation to read

Read-alouds play an important role in young children’s literacy development. This study investigates how, and to what extent, Swedish parents of children aged 1–16 engage in reading aloud. Previous research on reading aloud is also applied to research-based practices for promoting students’ intrinsic motivation to read and discussed in the present study. The results show that 9 out of 10 parents read aloud to children aged 0-4 years while only 4 of 10 read aloud to children aged 10-12 years. Several content areas that overlap were found where research on children's own reading can be easily transferred to the area of reading aloud.