The report Becoming a Nation of Readers (Anderson et al., 1985)concluded “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children” (p. 23). Yet, as Teale (2003) pointed out, reading aloud is by no means the “holy grail” for addressing the beginning reading dilemma; rather, it is the “what” and “how” of that practice or what actually happens that matters (p. 122). Findings from this study converged with other research demonstrating that interactive adult/child conversations explicitly teach vocabulary in ways that encourage children to process words at deeper leve lsacross various contexts (e.g., before, after), thereby promoting word learning (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Silverman, 2007; Silverman &Crandell, 2010)