Email this article 
The Effect of Four Different Approaches to Parent-Child Reading on Young Chinese Children’s Reading
Abstract
Forty families with four- to five-year-old Chinese children were chosen as experiment participants and equally divided into four groups for an eight-week parent-child reading experiment in different reading modes. (1) Groups A, B, and C read one of three kinds of Chinese-English audio bilingual picture books respectively: touch reading books, electronic books, and printed books + CDs, 30 minutes per day with their parents in the approach of Early Synchronous Bilingual Reading (ESBR). After the eight-week experiment, children participants cultivated good habits of and interest in reading and their reading comprehension, retelling and expression competence were improved significantly. Performance of each group in weekly reading time and frequency, proportion of recognized Chinese and English words was A>B>C>>D and differed significantly (p<0.01). The results show that reading bilingualism synchronously is effective and economical, and it not only enhanced children’s bilingual competence, but broadened their multicultural international horizon and developed their creative thinking and leadership. (2) Group D kept their original family reading mode and did not progress significantly in reading habits and test indicators (p-value=0.5-1). (3) Determinants of reading effect are parents’ awareness and choice of reading material, mode, frequency and time. The experiment results suggest that parents can choose bilingual picture books, cultivate their preschool children’s reading habits, and develop their children’s bilingual reading, listening, and speaking competence through interactive parent-child reading.
Keywords: Audio bilingual picture books; early parent-child reading; approach of ESBR; comparative experimentFull Text:
PDFReferences
Cai, M. (22 May 2015). Internet + Era: Parents Need Make Up the Parent-Child Joint Reading. China Youth, 11.
Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education (6th ed). London: Routledge.
Cummins, J. (2005). Teaching for Cross-Language Transfer in Dual Language Education: Possibilities and Pitfalls. Paper presented at TESOL Symposium on Dual Language Education: Teaching and Learning Two Languages in the EFL Setting on Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Feng, L. (2011). Function of picture books in child-parent reading activities. Research on Library Science, 5(10), 77-79.
Fry, E. B. (2000). Fry's 1000 Instant Words: The Most Common Words for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling. Westminster, CA. : Teacher Created Resources.
Goodman, K. (2006). What's Whole in Whole Language? Oakland, CA.: RDR Books.
Han, Y. & Zhang, W. (2013). Children's early childhood electronic reading in the digital era. Early Education & Development, 9(1), 13-17.
Lenneberg, E. (1967). The Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John Wiley.
Lian, R. (2012). Application and research of English picture books in preschool English teaching. Journal of Taiyuan City Vocational College, 2(3), 145-148.
Petitto, L. A. & Kovelman, I. (2003). The Bilingual Paradox: How signing-speaking bilingual children help us to resolve it and teach us about the brain’s mechanisms underlying all language acquisition. Learning Languages, 8 (3), 5-18.
Research Team of The Common Words List of Modern Chinese. (2008). List of Modern Common Chinese Words. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
Roberts, D. F. & Foehr, U. G. (2008). Trends in media use. The Future of Children, 18(1), 11-37.
Song, J. (2013). Investigation and analysis of the current early childhood parent-child picture books reading. Jiangsu Education Research , 20(34), 73-76.
Wang, J. (2014). Thinking about young children's picture book teaching. Read and Write Periodical, 10(02), 33-36.
Xi, L. (2014). Practical study on instructing family parent-child reading. Academy, (22), 53-57.
Yang, D. (2014). Reflection and reconstitution of China's goal of preschool bilingual education. Teli Journal, 9(2), 27-31.
Yang, H.(2008). Issues caused by watching TV and countermeasures. Current Preschool Education, 20(3), 39-40
Yue, Y. (2014). Influence of Reading Electronic Picture Books to the Reading Ability of at 5-6 Years Old Children (Master’s thesis). Zhejiang Sci-Tech University.
Zhang, X. (2008). Effects of Different Reading Modes on Children (doctoral dissertation). Shaanxi Normal University.
Zhu, H. (2009). Language Education of Preschool Children. Beijing: Science Press.
Zhu, Y. (2013). Investigation into 305 electronic media usages of children and youngsters. Chinese Journal of Child Health Care, 16(6), 642-645.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2013-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies
You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.