Mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral-reading practice: Effects of children's reading ability, children's gender, and mothers' educational level

To investigate the popular recommendation that children practice reading aloud at home, the conversations of 76 3rd graders reading to their mothers were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded. Conversations between below-average readers and their mothers were marked by the frequent use of error corrections. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more error corrections than did college-educated mothers, despite equal numbers of above-average and below-average readers in each group. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more comments than did college-educated mothers. College-educated mothers asked significantly more questions, including high-level questions, than did highschool-educated mothers. Girls spoke more during the conversations than did boys. Text difficulty effects are underscored, and practical implications are presented.