Early teaching of Chinese literacy skills and later literacy outcomes

Abstract

This study followed 88 children in Beijing and Hong Kong for three years to investigate the relationships between the early teaching of literacy skills and later literacy outcomes. The children were administered the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of five years, and three years later. Their parents and teachers reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, the home/classroom literacy environment and their beliefs about language learning. Findings showed that the Hong Kong cohort significantly surpassed their Beijing counterparts in literacy attainments at age five and age eight. After controlling for age, site, maternal education and teacher qualification, formal literacy activities in early childhood significantly contributed to literacy attainment at primary school, whereas informal literacy experiences did not. Results suggest that the complicated nature of Chinese orthography may make early instruction particularly valuable in Chinese literacy acquisition. The psycholinguistic, pedagogical and sociocontextual accounts and implications of these findings are discussed.

Cross-lagged relationships between home learning environment and academic achievement in Chinese

“…Chinese parents reported engaging more frequently in storybook reading in Grades 1 and 2 among children with poorer reading skills. Based on the fact that most previous studies that assessed home literacy activities in preschool children have reported positive correlations with academic achievement Q5 (Li et al, 2008;Manolitsis et al, 2009Manolitsis et al, , 2011Morrison & Cooney, 2001;Sénéchal, 2006;Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002;Shu et al, 2002;Stephenson et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2008), we can argue that the time when home literacy activities are assessed determines the direction of the relationship with children's reading ability. Before children go to Grade 1, the more parents engage in literacy activities the better their children's emergent literacy scores are (e.g., vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge).…”

“…An explanation could be that Chinese parents engage in formal literacy activities much earlier (i.e., when their children are four or five years old; Chow & McBride-Chang, 2003;Li et al, 2008;McBride-Chang et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2008). Once children master the basics of character recognition and writing, parents likely shift their attention to more informal ways of supporting their children's literacy (i.e., by providing more educational resources or by reading stories to their children and discussing their content).…”

“…The studies that examined the role of home literacy activities in Chinese children's reading ability have reported a rather positive effect (Li et al, 2008;Li & Rao, 2000;McBride-Chang et al, 2012;Shu et al, 2002). For example, Li et al (2008) followed 88 fiveyear-old children from Beijing and Hong Kong for three years and examined if the home literacy environment was related to literacy skills both at the beginning and at the end of the study.…”

“…For example, Li et al (2008) followed 88 fiveyear-old children from Beijing and Hong Kong for three years and examined if the home literacy environment was related to literacy skills both at the beginning and at the end of the study. They found that formal literacy activities were significantly related to literacy skills in both groups of children and at both measurement points (rs ranged from .36 to .56).…”

“…In addition, only a handful of studies have examined the role of the home literacy environment in Chinese reading (Li, Corrie, & Wong, 2008;Li & Rao, 2000;Shu, Li, Anderson, Ku, & Yue, 2002;Zhang, Jin, Chen, Zhang, & Hoff, 2008). Given the significant orthographic differences between Chinese and European languages, what we know about the role of the home literacy environment in European languages may not apply to Chinese.…”