Overall, two trends were observed during storytelling:

* The story was told without interruptions; thus, adults tended to avoid asking questions, did not strike up conversations with the child, and, when there were questions, tended to give short answers and continued with the story. This pattern was observed particularly during narration.
* Children tended to be involved in the story, either impromptu—with questions, comments, or by adding up story segments—or by being challenged by adults—through questions, drawing children's attention to pictures, urging them to recall personal experiences or information, asking them to justify the characters' actions, etc.

In order to investigate the type of extratextual interactions occurring during storytelling, 88 stories were picked and analyzed in terms of the extratextual interactions involved.
Part II: Extratextual Interactions during Storytelling
Sample
In order to have as homogeneous a sample as possible, the stories that were analyzed were chosen according to the type of material (literary or general knowledge book) and the discourse type (fiction or poetry). Excluded were 11 informational stories, 2 stories in which no interaction took place, 5 stories in verse, and 6 picture books with very little text. Thus, the sample comprised 88 entertaining literary texts. Of these, 58 were folktales, 21 of which were narrated and 34 read; 3 were improvised stories, which were narrated; 6 were Aesop's tales, which were read; and 24 short stories, which were read.
Coding Extratextual Interaction
The extratextual interactions involved in the stories were coded on the basis of content and were examined separately for parents and children. The specific coding procedure was based on other research on storytelling that examined adult and children's extratextual interaction (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Yaden, Smolkin, & Conlon, 1989). The specific procedure involved the following extratextual interaction categories:

1. Attention. Extratextual interaction with a view to drawing children's attention (by calling the children's names: "Can you hear, Irene?" or by drawing their attention to illustrations: "Can you see the dog?")
2. Names. Extratextual interaction with a view to making children familiar with the names of objects, incidents, characters, and setting ("This is a lion.")
3. Asking about names. Questions about the names of objects, incidents, characters, etc., of the story ("What is she wearing on her head?" "Where is the lion caged?")
4. Feedback. Extratextual interaction that aims at praising, confirming, or correcting children's extratextual interaction ("Yes, Snow White was pretty." "No, he was not dropping pebbles; he was dropping crumbs.")
5. Repetition. Verbatim repetition of children's words or phrases (child: "a dog"; parent: "a dog")
6. Elaboration. Extratextual interaction through which a child's words or phrases are elaborated by adding extra information (child: "a bee"; parent: "a flying bee")
7. Organizing the activity. Extratextual interaction through which children are kept intrigued by the story ("I'm going ahead.")
8. Prediction. Questions asked to a child with a view to giving information about facts and incidents in the story that have not yet been told ("What did the animals do next?")
9. Relating the story to real life. Commentary and questions to children with a view to relating the plot of the story to everyday experiences and informing them about facts and objects in the story ("What color is your own toothbrush?" "We drive a car; they used to drive a cart."
10. Recalling information. Questions to children in order to make them recall incidents and details in the story.
11. Clarifying. Extratextual interaction with a view to motivating picture description, word explanation, and interpretation of characters' attitudes.
12. Asking for clarification. Questions that motivate children to describe or interpret the characters' attitudes in the story ("Why do you think they were happy?")

With regard to children's extratextual interaction, coding involved the following 9 of the 12 categories made by adults:

1. Names. Children name objects, incidents, characters ("a dog").
2. Questions about names. Children ask about names of objects, incidents, and characters ("What's this?").
3. Repetition. Children repeat the exact words or phrases that the narrator/reader had used.
4. Relating the story to real life. Children relate incidents in the story to their own personal experiences ("I'll take out the thorn for you." "I want a watch like this for me, too.").
5. Recalling information. Children point out details in the story and give information (Parent: "What does a matchmaker do?" Child: "She finds grooms.")
6. Prediction. Children predict the development of the plot ("Now the wolf is going to come in.").
7. Clarifying. Children describe pictures and explain attitudes ("Here is the little pig going to his little brother.").
8. Questions for clarification. Children ask for explanations about incidents and attitudes ("What is little John doing?" "How did he go?").
9. Parallel reading. The category involves only children's extratextual interaction and “reading”/“narrating” words or phrases in the story, while parents are reading/narrating (Parent: "and Little Red Riding Hood set off…" Child: "…to go to her grandmother's.").

With regard to the reliability of coding interventions, the authors first categorized the extratextual interactions of five stories. Then they discussed the categories with three colleagues who had read the stories; no different opinions were expressed. The statistical analysis of the extratextual interactions was performed with SPSS and involved descriptive statistics, frequency statistics, and mean comparisons (independent samples t-test). Minimum level of significance was p < 0.05.
Results

The comparison of children's and adults' extratextual interactions—separately for narration and story reading—demonstrated that, with regard to narration, adults' extratextual interactions were less frequent than those of children. With regard to story reading, the number of adults' extratextual interactions was greater than the number of children's extratextual interactions (Tables 2 & 3).

Mean comparison per extratextual interaction category among younger and older children demonstrated that children up to 3 years old made more extratextual comments than older children with regard to names (t = 2.032, p < 0.05). Older children made more extratextual comments than younger ones for the category questions for clarification (t = -3.198, p < 0.05), whereas adults made more extratextual comments when they read/narrated to older children for the category clarification (t = -2.385, p < 0.05).
Discussion
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In Western societies, narration and reading are two approaches through which young children with the help of adults become familiar with their heritage and learn their native language (Teale, 1984). Despite some similarities, the two approaches differ in significant ways:

* Material origin. Reading is based only on written texts, whereas narration exploits sources from both oral texts and anonymous writing.
* Memory. Although essential to the narrator, who must have a priori knowledge of the story, memory is insignificant for the reader.
* Visual contact with the audience. Although constant for the narrator, visual contact is limited for the reader because there is always a book between a reader and his or her audience.
* Story dramatization. For narrators, story dramatization is easier than for readers because narrators tell the story as a personal experience with their own judgment and interpretation, whereas readers are committed to the written text (Giannikopoulou, 1996).

In Greece, both approaches are employed for storytelling to preschool children. Narration is mostly used by adults at a lower educational level for folktales, perhaps because folklore is still vivid among people of a lower social status (Natsiopoulou, 2002). In contrast, reading stories is preferred by adults at a higher educational level, possibly because of their familiarity with children's books (Natsiopoulou, 2002), including folktales.

Both during narration and reading, there are verbal exchanges between adults and children, which in the present study were made exclusively about the content of the story. Extratextual interaction about writing styles (i.e., naming letters, highlighting words or sentences) was not observed. Adults' focus on the content of the story has been observed in other studies as well (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Morrow & Smith, 1990). In the present study, extratextual interaction about writing styles did not occur because the texts used did not invite that kind of extratextual interaction; it has often been noted that adults' extratextual interaction about writing is observed when they read alphabet books (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003; van Kleeck, 1998). van Kleeck (1998) maintains that when parents read to preschool children, first they emphasize the story, irrespective of its type (simple story, poetry, story with emphasis on the alphabet). They subsequently, in the case of storybooks, emphasize the plot; in the case of alphabet books, they make comments about the alphabet, morphemes at the beginning of words, etc. It is worth noting that alphabet books are common in Greece but were not chosen by participants in the present study. A possible explanation is that parents who had been asked to tell their children stories made their choice only among simple stories with pleasant plots and action in order to be able to motivate discussion about story content (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003).

The quantity and quality of verbal exchanges between adults and children during storytelling were affected by the approach employed (narration vs. reading) and the educational level of the adults. It was initially observed that reading stories resulted in more verbal exchanges between adults and children than narrating stories. The comparison of means indicated that during reading, adults' extratextual interaction was more frequent than during narration in terms of both high-level abstraction (i.e., relation of the story to real life, elaborated sentences) and low-level abstraction and concrete thought (i.e., inducing children to focus on pictures, names of objects, and incidents). In the present study, the narration approach was chosen principally by parents with less education. Torr (2004) found that parents who left school at an early age read stories quietly to children and interacted occasionally with them. In the present study, the small number of extratextual interactions during narration could be partly attributed to the adults’ storytelling technique.

Verbal interaction between adults and children appears to be frequent during reading when children's interaction is motivated by pictures in a storybook. Yaden, Smolkin, and Conlon (1989) maintained that 50%-60% of the questions asked by preschool children during storytelling at home involved characters and incidents in illustrations. In the present study, it was discovered that during reading, children's extratextual interaction was considerably more frequent than during narration with regard to the categories questions about names of objects and incidents and questions for clarification about pictures and attitudes. Thus, there was a greater number of adults' extratextual interactions during reading for the categories names (t = -4.56, p < 0.05) and clarification (t = -7.09, p < 0.05); there was a positive correlation between children's questions about names and adults' extratextual interaction for the category names (r = 0.736, p < 0.01) and children’s questions about clarification and adults extratextual interaction for the category clarification (r = 0.505, p < 0.01). The specific correlation between extratextual interaction categories that are considered to be low-level abstraction by researchers demonstrates that during reading, illustrations enhance verbal interaction between adults and children, principally in terms of the verbal exchanges requiring concrete thought.

The educational level of the narrator or reader was discovered to be related to adults' extratextual interaction, both in terms of high- and low-level abstraction. The narrators or readers of a higher educational level made more high-level abstraction extratextual comments than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. In addition, narrators or readers of a higher educational level challenged children to be involved in the narration or reading more than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. Thus, they made more prompts and asked more questions about specific and easily perceived objects to make children be involved in the narration or reading—for example, examining pictures or naming objects that they had already named before, as indicated in the following extract read from the folktale "The Wolf and the Seven Kids":

Once upon a time, a wolf, whose name was Greedy, wanted to devour the seven kids, who lived with their mother in a cottage in the woods.

Mother (looking at the picture): Can you see the wolf?
Child: Yes.

Then one day there was the right moment! Mother Goat was going out shopping.

Mother: Where is Mother Goat? Where is she going?
Child: Shopping.

Sometimes adults and children were engaged in a more essential conversation that contributed to (1) justifying attitudes, (2) providing information, (3) relating the story to the children’s daily lives.

Justifying Attitudes (narrated extract from the folktale “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”)

...the kid is running, getting a pair of scissors, and also the big needle and thread.

Child: The kid went and fetched them before you can say Jack Robinson.
Narrator: Well done, Elias! Just before you can say Jack Robinson! The kid ran so fast so that they could do their job, before the wolf wakes up.

Providing Information (narrated extract from the folktale "The Three Little Pigs")

...one of the little pigs built a house of wood.

Child: Where did he find the wood?
Narrator: He found it in the woods.
Child: What about the logs?
Narrator: He cut down trees in the woods.
Child: With the machine?
Narrator: Yes, with the machine.

Another little pig built a house of reeds.

Narrator: Do you know where he found the reeds?
Child: Where?
Narrator: In the lake.
Child: Are there any reeds in the lake?
Narrator: Yes, there are reeds in the lake.

Relating the Story to the Children's Daily Lives (extract read from the story "Mister Smart")

...and apart from everything else it also showed the time, the weather, and could sing happily.

Child: I would like to have an alarm clock like that, but it's impossible.
Narrator: Why is it impossible?
Child: It is, because I haven't got one, because I live in Hortiatis.
Narrator: Why do you live in Hortiatis and not in Smartville?

Research has suggested that the use of abstract concepts during reading promotes a child's linguistic development (Leseman & de Jong, 1998); therefore, many parent training programs teach reading approaches that combine frequent verbal exchanges between adults and children on the basis of questions such as "why" and "how" in addition to elaboration of children's phrases and other high-level abstraction extratextual interaction (Arnold, Lonigan, Whitehurst, & Epstein, 1994).

In the present study, we found that such extratextual interactions during storytelling to children were more common among parents with a higher education; however, of the total number of extratextual interactions, only a small percentage could be categorized as high-level abstraction (Table 2). Categories that were described as low-level abstraction and concrete thought (feedback to children, questions about names, drawing children's attention, clarification) constituted the highest percentage of adults' extratextual interaction, regardless of the approach employed by the adults and their educational background.

These results suggest that Greek families treat narration and story reading to children as a child-centered activity, principally aimed at entertaining children. Specifically, the study suggests that the fundamental purpose of using children's books with preschool children is to challenge them aesthetically (Glazer, 1991; Rosenblatt, 1991), thus contributing to their love of reading. Whether the storytelling by Greek parents observed in this study contributed to their children’s literacy development is difficult to determine, given that the majority of verbal exchanges between adults and children during story narrating and reading was of low-level abstraction and involved items that are used for communication between adults and children on other occasions besides storytelling.


* Little Red Riding Hood: 9 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 5 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 4 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 1 instance
* Sleeping Beauty: 1 instance
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 1 instance
* Improvisations: 3 instances

Readings

* Little Red Riding Hood: 6 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 3 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 5 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 3 instances
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 2 instances
* Cinderella: 2 instances
* Beauty and the Beast: 2 instances
* The Tin Soldier: 3 instances
* Sleeping Beauty
* Rapunzel
* Mrs. Kind
* The Magic Flute
* Puss in Boots
* Pinocchio
* Rosy and Snowy
* The Nutcracker
* 6 Aesop's tales
* 24 short stories

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