Home Literacy Environment and English as A Second Language Acquisition: A Meta-analysis

This paper is a quantitative synthesis of research on home literacy environment (HLE) and children’s English as a second language (ESL) learning outcomes through a meta-analysis of 18 articles in kindergarten, primary, and secondary school students (N = 4401) carried out between 2000 and 2018. It examines the associations between HLE factors and children’s ESL performance. Results showed the effect sizes between HLE factors and children’s ESL performance was small to moderate. Family members shared a similar effect size on children’s ESL performance. Parental literacy teaching behaviors have stronger effects on children’s ESL ability than parental beliefs on their children’s English learning and the availability of learning resources at home. These results highlight the importance of HLE and indicate the relative contributions of specific HLE factors on children’s ESL acquisition

Roles of reading anxiety and working memory in reading comprehension in English as a second language

This study investigated the relationships between affective and cognitive factors and reading comprehension in English as a second language (ESL). Specifically, we evaluated the contributions of reading anxiety and verbal working memory to ESL reading comprehension in Chinese students. A total of 105 Chinese ESL undergraduates were included. Structural equation modeling results showed that reading anxiety, represented by reading trait and state anxiety, and verbal working memory were unique predictors of ESL reading comprehension. In addition, there was no significant reading anxiety × working memory interaction effect. Mediation analyses revealed that reading anxiety partially mediated the relationship between verbal working memory and ESL reading comprehension. These results highlight the importance of affective and cognitive factors in predicting ESL reading comprehension and shed light on the methods in enhancing ESL learning

Dialogic Reading With Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Kindergarteners: Does Reading With Parents or Siblings Enhance Their Language Development?

Dialogic reading (DR) is an interactive reading approach that enhances the language development of children. This study aims to extend DR to the shared reading context involving children with attentiondeficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their older siblings and to examine the effects of DR with parents/siblings on the language development of Chinese children with ADHD. This study included 850 Chinese kindergarteners with ADHD and their parents/older siblings. These children were pretested on their Chinese receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, character reading, listening comprehension, and reading interest and were randomly assigned to four groups, namely, dialogic reading with parents (PR-DR), dialogic reading with siblings (SR-DR), parent reading control (PR-C), and sibling reading control (SR-C). After a 12-week intervention period, they were posttested on the same measures. Results show that both DR with parents and siblings effectively enhanced language skills and reading interest in children with ADHD. In addition, those children who read with their older siblings demonstrated greater improvements in their expressive vocabulary, character reading skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and reading interest yet achieved a smaller growth in their listening comprehension compared with those who read with their parents. These findings showed the positive effects of DR on the language development of children with ADHD and highlight the importance of involving siblings in home literacy activities to facilitate the language development of these children

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Chinese Language and Reading Abilities

This study investigated the etiology of individual differences in Chinese language and reading skills in 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years (228 pairs of monozygotic twins and 84 pairs of dizygotic twins; 166 male pairs and 146 female pairs). Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices. All analyses controlled for the effects of age. There were moderate to substantial genetic influences on word reading, tone awareness, phonological memory, morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (estimates ranged from .42 to .73), while shared environment exerted moderate to strong effects on receptive vocabulary, syllable and rhyme awareness and orthographic skills (estimates ranged from .35 to .63). Results were largely unchanged when scores were adjusted for nonverbal reasoning as well as age. Findings of this study are mostly similar to those found for English, a language with very different characteristics, and suggest the universality of genetic and environmental influences across languages

Twin study on Chinese language and reading development

Reading development: no. 1This study investigates the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences on Chinese language and reading development in 150 pairs of monozygotic and 150 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins. Typically developing twin pairs aged from 4 to 11 were recruited in Hong Kong local kindergartens and primary schools. They were tested individually on tasks of character recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological processing skills, tone awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic skills, and general cognitive abilities. Also, their saliva was collected for zygosity assessment, and their parents were required to fill in a questionnaire to provide information on family background, and home literacy environment. Testing was completed in November 2008, and data analysis using Mx will have been done by March 2009. Variances of each construct explained by genetic, shared environmental, and non-shared environmental influences will be computed, and genetic correlations among constructs will be explored. It is hypothesized that heredity will play a more central role on reading skill and phonological awareness, while environment will have relatively stronger effects on vocabulary knowledge and orthographic skills, in learning Chinese. However, we anticipate a smaller genetic effect on Chinese reading skill compared to past studies on English. This study is the first twin study of learning Chinese, a language which has contrasting characteristics with alphabetic languages. It will be key to enhancing the understanding of universal or specific factors of language and reading acquisition across languages, and will inform educational policy on the construction of effective learning environments for Chinese acquisition.The 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR 2009), Boston, MA., 25-27 June 2009

Longitudinal twin study on Chinese reading development: stability and change in genetic and environmental influences

Paper PresentationThe 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR 2010), Berlin, Germany, 7-10 July 2010

Reading picture books with elements of positive psychology for enhancing the learning of English as a second language in young children

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Is There Common Etiology in Children's Development of Various Cognitive Skills? Evidence from a Chinese Twin Study

Poster Session 14, no. 1