Response during picturebook read alouds in English as a foreign language

This paper begins by discussing the picturebook and its picture-word dynamic followed by response to picturebooks and its relevance to teachers who want to (re)consider picturebooks in a foreign language classroom. A theory of literary understanding is suggested, as a way to support foreign language teachers to interpret their learners’ responses to picturebooks and help them recognize the relevance of response to the storytelling experience. The final section describes two picturebooks with concrete examples of the different ways picturebooks enable and promote authentic responses using the children’s linguistic repertoire, through both the pictures and the words.