Abstract:
Shared book reading is necessary for learning Chinese as a second language (L2), but its effectiveness requires further empirical exploration and support. Scholars emphasise considering parental and child characteristics alongside school-based interventions. Guided by the bioecological framework, this study included three groups: an experimental group of ethnic minority kindergarteners in Hong Kong and two control groups of L2 and first language (L1) Chinese children. A sixteen-week shared book intervention was implemented. ANOVA and MANCOVA analyses of data from 161 children and 35 parents showed significant gains in metalinguistic awareness and word and text reading among the experimental group. The structured intervention was particularly effective in enhancing metalinguistic awareness, enabling L2 children to perform similarly to L1 children in post-tests. Additionally, fathers’ oral proficiency in Chinese and children’s use of ethnic languages positively impacted word and text reading. This study enriches the bioecological framework and offers insights for promoting L2 Chinese reading.
This study offers new empirical evidence on the effectiveness of shared book reading interventions for L2 Chinese learners in Hong Kong, enriching the bioecological framework by illustrating the joint influence of home and school contexts on language development. It also highlights the role of individual and parental factors—such as fathers’ oral Chinese proficiency and children’s use of ethnic languages—in moderating reading outcomes and extends existing research by examining literacy gains across sub-lexical, lexical, and super-lexical levels.
A brief introduction of the journal:
Reading in a Foreign Language is a peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to the theory and practice of reading instruction and reading development in foreign or second language contexts. It is ranked as a Q1 journal in the Scopus database, according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator.
Journal link: https://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/
Paper link: https://hdl.handle.net/10125/67503