Abstract—This study aims to examine the current quality of the "language" and "book" environments in daycare centers. The study primarily employed a survey method, utilizing the ITERS-3 scale, and involved ten daycare centers located in central and southern Taiwan. The main findings are summarized as follows: (1) The "Staff use of book with children" subscale had the highest average score of 3.2 points, corresponding to Level 3 on the ITERS-3 scale, indicating that caregivers met the minimum behavioral performance requirements; (2) The "Encouraging vocabulary development" subscale had the lowest average score of 1.6 points, corresponding to Level 1, indicating inappropriate caregiver behaviors in this dimension; (3) Although performance varied across the six subscales, none of the ten centers achieved the maximum score of 7 points. Based on these findings, the following recommendations are proposed: (1) Daycare centers should allocate annual budgets to purchase diverse picture books and regularly organize reading sessions to enhance caregivers' professional knowledge and application skills; (2) The child-to-teacher ratio and group size should be reduced to maintain the quality of teaching and increase the frequency of interactions;(3) Caregivers should design more vocabulary-enriching games that integrate actions or object names, introduce materials before activities, and repeatedly reinforce vocabulary use throughout the day across various topics to strengthen infants' language abilities.
 

Keywords—Daycare Center, ITERS-3, language and book environment 

Cite: Yu-Mei Fan, Shu-Chu Sylvia Yang, Chun-Yen Liao, Nine-Ping Chang, and Shu-Jung Lin, "Study on Language and Book Environment Rating of Daycare Centers in Central and Southern Taiwan," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 11, No. 6, pp. 320-325, 2025.

Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).