Abstract

Although the relation between child-caregiver non-present talk and children's language and literacy de-velopment has been extensively studied, scarce research has examined the contributions of teacher talk's conceptual, interactive, and linguistic dimensions to early literacy. Using fine-grained linguistic analysis, lessons from 16 Chilean classrooms from Pre-K to 2 nd grade were coded for: conceptual (non-instructional, instructional present, instructional non-present), interactive (teacher-student talk ratio), linguistic (syntac-tic complexity, lexical diversity). Students were administered baseline and end-of-year literacy assess-ments (n = 343). Controlling for school, classroom, and individual-level factors, HLM analyses revealed a positive quadratic effect of teachers' lexical diversity on early literacy gains and a negative effect of teacher-student talk ratio, such that classrooms with greater teacher participation in instructional non -present talk tended to display lower literacy gains. A significant interaction revealed that at greater levels of teacher participation, teachers' higher lexical diversity negatively impacted literacy gains.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.