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Early teaching of Chinese literacy skillsand later literacy outcomesHui Li a , Loraine F. Corrie b & Betty Kit Mei Wong ba The University of Hong Kong , Hong Kongb The Hong Kong Institute of Education , Hong KongPublished online: 22 May 2008.
To cite this article: Hui Li , Loraine F. Corrie & Betty Kit Mei Wong (2008) Early teaching of Chineseliteracy skills and later literacy outcomes, Early Child Development and Care, 178:5, 441-459, DOI:10.1080/03004430600789365
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Early Child Development and CareVol. 178, No. 5, July 2008, pp. 441–459
ISSN 0300-4430 (print)/ISSN 1476-8275 (online)/08/050441–19© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/03004430600789365
Early teaching of Chinese literacy skills and later literacy outcomesHui Lia*, Loraine F. Corrieb and Betty Kit Mei WongbaThe University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; bThe Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong KongTaylor and Francis LtdGECD_A_178884.sgm10.1080/03004430600789365Early Child Development and Care0300-4430 (print)/1476-8275 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & [email protected]
This study followed 88 children in Beijing and Hong Kong for three years to investigate therelationships between the early teaching of literacy skills and later literacy outcomes. The childrenwere administered the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of five years, andthree years later. Their parents and teachers reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, thehome/classroom literacy environment and their beliefs about language learning. Findings showedthat the Hong Kong cohort significantly surpassed their Beijing counterparts in literacy attainmentsat 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 atprimary school, whereas informal literacy experiences did not. Results suggest that the complicatednature of Chinese orthography may make early instruction particularly valuable in Chinese literacyacquisition. The psycholinguistic, pedagogical and sociocontextual accounts and implications ofthese findings are discussed.
Keywords: Chinese literacy; Early teaching; Later outcomes
Introduction
This study investigated the progress in literacy skills of young children living inBeijing and Hong Kong. Children in these two Chinese contexts need to acquireknowledge and skills of the complicated orthography in order to become literate, andyet contrasting approaches to pedagogy are evident in early childhood settings inBeijing and Hong Kong. Hong Kong teachers believe that an early start to formalliteracy teaching is necessary and should begin when children enter early childhoodsettings at the age of two years and eight months. Teachers in Beijing maintain thatinformal literacy practices are best for young children, and the government bans
*Corresponding author. Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road,Hong Kong. Email: [email protected]
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formal teaching until the children start primary school at age six (Li & Rao, 2000,2005). The findings of the current study might contribute to the debates concerningthe merits of informal and formal teaching approaches (Sénéchal et al., 1998;Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002), and the age that children may develop literacy skillsthrough formal teaching (Elkind, 2001; Whitehurst, 2001).
Formal literacy versus informal literacy activities
Literacy is regarded as an emergent phenomenon that can be facilitated by providingchildren with enriched experience and an environment with printed matter before theyenter school (for example, Teale & Sulzby, 1986). There are two predominant defi-nitions of literacy, each of which has, inevitably, its own ideological basis (Li, 2000).The first definition of literacy, which is the most conventional, popular and common-sense view of the process, embraces literacy as a set of skills, consisting almost exclu-sively of the abilities to read and write in a basic, mechanical sense of these words. Incontemporary dictionaries such as the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary(Sinclair, 1995), literacy is typically defined as the ability to or being able to read andwrite a designated language. However, the alternative definition of literacy is morerecent and represents a challenge to the orthodoxies of the first one. The new formu-lation stresses the sorts of social practices in which reading, writing and talking areembedded, and out of which they develop, rather than the private, cognitive skills ofindividuals. Over the past two decades, a new body of literature delineating a socio-cultural approach to literacy has emerged, combining work in linguistics, socialpsychology, anthropology and education, and, accordingly, literacy is conceived as aplural set of social practices and as a cultural tool (Carter, 1995; Li, 2000).
Consequently, a dichotomy is now evident in literacy pedagogies reflecting the twodefinitions of literacy: formal literacy versus informal approach. The formal teachingof literacy is defined as the implementation of a teacher-directed, structured programdesigned to teach specific elements of literacy. The main teaching methods in formalapproaches are instruction, drill, practice and rote learning of written Chinese char-acters. Formal literacy activities focus on the print itself, the written words, and thenames and sounds of specific letters (Smolkin & Yalden, 1992). Informal approachesinclude the frequent use of printed materials for pleasure and information gathering,the arousal of children’s interest and pleasure in books and printed materials, and theheightening of children’s motivation to be involved in literacy experiences. Informalliteracy activities stress the message contained in the print, rather than the print itself(Sénéchal et al., 1998; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002).
However, research conducted in western contexts has not established whether ornot formal literacy teaching in early childhood has beneficial effects on children’slong-term literacy development. Recent debate about whether young children can(Whitehurst, 2001) or cannot (Elkind, 2001) benefit longitudinally from early formalliteracy experiences reflects the dichotomy evident in current literature (Juel, 1988;Rescorla et al., 1991; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998;Lonigan et al., 2000; Whitehurst & Fischel, 2000).
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Early Chinese literacy 443
Elkind’s (2001) argument against the early start to formal reading instruction drewon theories formulated by Piaget and Vygotsky, who asserted that reading skillsrequire syllogistic reasoning abilities that typically develop around the age of five orsix. Elkind (2001) maintained that the results of longitudinal studies indicated thatearly academic programs did not support advanced later learning. For example,Rescorla et al. (1991) found that the children attending an academic program did notoutperform the children attending a developmentally appropriate program inacademic performance, but that the children were more anxious and had lower self-esteem. Schweinhart and Weikart (1997) compared the long-term effectiveness ofthree typical preschool curriculum models and concluded that the participants in thenursery school and High/Scope programs had significant advantages over the partic-ipants in the direct instruction program at the age of 23.
Conversely, Whitehurst (2001) asserted that longitudinal data established thatchildren experienced many benefits from academically oriented kindergartenprograms. For example, Lonigan et al. (2000), Whitehurst and Fischel (2000), andWhitehurst and Lonigan (1998) found that pre-reading skills such as knowledge ofprint, phonological awareness and writing were strong predictors of reading successwell into primary school. Similar findings resulted from a large-scale longitudinalstudy of 22,000 kindergarten children conducted by the National Centre for Educa-tional Statistics (West et al., 2001) that found a strong link between children’spre-reading skills when they entered school and their later academic performance.Research indicated that direct teaching at kindergarten resulted in gains in pre-reading skills, and the guidance of a parent or older sibling was necessary to helpchildren acquire specific literacy skills at home (such as Crain-Thorson & Dale, 1992;Whitehurst et al., 1994; Evans et al., 2000; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). In a word,early reading instruction is necessary because the pre-reading skills are not acquiredthrough typical oral interactions, or through enriched literacy environments(Sénéchal et al., 1998).
Educators in Beijing and Hong Kong are cognisant of the debate concerning theteaching of literacy in early childhood settings. Informed by western research,Hong Kong’s policy-makers have sought to incorporate the best of western peda-gogy into accepted practices in early childhood settings, and informal literacyactivities are promoted repeatedly in the governmental guidelines for pre-primarycurriculum (Li & Rao, 2005). However, there are some particular aspects ofChinese contexts such as Confucian values that may render problematic a simpletransposition of western practices without further investigation, which will bediscussed in the next section.
Learning and teaching of Chinese literacy in Beijing and Hong Kong
Chinese is a morphosyllabic writing system in which each character reflects a syllableas well as a unit of meaning or morpheme (Shu, 2003). The character is the basic unitin the writing system and has three levels of orthographic structure: the stroke, strokepattern and character structure. Each character is made up of between one and over
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20 different strokes, with the average number of strokes being 11 for the complexcharacters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and nine for the simplified charactersused in mainland China (Chan, 1982; Seidenberg, 1985). Like the grapheme in thealphabetic system, the stroke does not carry information concerning meaning, but thechange of a stroke changes the meaning and sound of a character (e.g. ‘lost’; ‘arrow’; ‘husband’; and ‘sky’).
The term ‘literacy’ does not easily translate into Chinese as there is no literalChinese equivalent of English sense of the word. In China, officially, literacy is trans-lated into a Chinese word ‘ ’ [shao3 mang2] whose literal translation is ‘eradicat-ing illiteracy’ (Li, 2000). From an ethnographic perspective, G. A. Postiglione(personal communication, 16 October 1999) translated literacy into ‘ ’ [xue2wen2 hua4] meaning ‘learning to be culturalized’. However, in the present study wedefined this term in a conventional perspective and used ‘ ’ [shi2 zi4] as itsChinese equivalent, which means ‘being able to read Chinese characters’. Being liter-ate in Chinese has been defined by the number of characters known, with the bench-mark in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan set between 2500 and 3500 characters(Butcher, 1995; Taylor, 1999). This vast number of characters makes literacy acqui-sition difficult for young children. Worse than that is the complicated orthography ofChinese, which has 600 basic stroke patterns that distinguish the characters, andthere are many homophones and no grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules (Han,1994; Ho & Bryant, 1999).
The tremendous challenges in learning to read Chinese have been recognised byeducators and policy-makers in Beijing and Hong Kong. However, interestingly,despite the similarities between the two Chinese contexts, there are many differencesin the linguistic environment, language policies and literacy practices. Beijing is amonolingual society where children are immersed in Putonghua (as the spokenlanguage) and simplified Chinese characters (as the written form). By contrast, HongKong was a colony of Great Britain for many years until 1997, and as a result Chineseand English are the official languages. Cantonese is the spoken Chinese language, andcomplex Chinese characters are the written form. Over 90% of the population speakCantonese and 10% speak English, Putonghua or a minority language (Li & Rao,2000). In addition, the complex Chinese characters are more complicated than thesimplified characters (Chan, 1982; Seidenberg, 1985), and the trilingual environ-ment in Hong Kong is remarkably more complex than the monolingual context inBeijing (Li & Rao, 2000, 2005). Therefore, one would assume that Hong Kongchildren in such a difficult language environment will have more difficulties in acquir-ing Chinese literacy, and, accordingly, their attainments will be lower than theirBeijing counterparts.
The Beijing educational authority subscribes to a ‘readiness’ approach to literacydevelopment, and maintains that physical and neurological maturation is necessaryto allow children to benefit from instruction in reading and writing (Liang et al.,1997). Reminiscent of Elkind’s (2001) position, the government has ruled that formalteaching of reading and writing is a waste of time and potentially harmful until chil-dren mature at six or seven years of age. Therefore, the formal teaching of literacy
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Early Chinese literacy 445
skills is not allowed in Beijing’s early childhood settings, and parents and teachers donot expect it to be part of the curriculum (Li & Rao, 2000). The young childrentypically receive informal literacy experiences, as all of the teachers have completedthree years of preservice teacher education, which have equipped them with adequateknowledge of informal literacy practices and the skills to implement them appropri-ately (Li & Rao, 2005).
In Hong Kong, young children start to read Chinese characters in their first year ofpreschooling when they may be as young as two years and eight months old (Li &Rao, 2000; McBride-Chang & Ho, 2000). And a deeply entrenched Confucian beliefheld by parents and teachers is that young children must begin their learning as earlyas possible to be well educated. Anecdotal evidence suggests that parents, who payfor early childhood education, demand the formal teaching of literacy skills from thetime the young child begins preschooling (Li & Rao, 2005). It seems that both parentsand teachers value the role of direct teaching in literacy acquisition at home andpreschool. However, the teachers do not have adequate knowledge of language orliteracy development or the skills they need to implement strategies that help childrenbecome literate (Rao & Koong, 1999; Li, 2000). Although informal literacy practicesare promoted in teacher education courses, it seems that teachers are most influencedby the established practices in the field, and the teacher-directed formal teaching ofliteracy skills remains a prominent part of the daily curriculum (see Li & Rao [2005]for classroom observations).
The study
The present study was designed to investigate the effects of formal literacy instruc-tion on children’s later literacy outcomes. Specifically, it examined whether earlyinstruction in literacy skills in preschool correlated with higher literacy achievementsthree years later in primary school. The children from Beijing and Hong Kong wereselected to compare their progress in literacy skills because they had the expectedsimilarities and differences in the Chinese contexts and early Chinese literacy expe-riences.
An earlier study (Li & Rao, 2000) compared the literacy skills of these childrenwhen they were three, four and five years of age in Beijing and Hong Kong. Thestudy found that the literacy skills of the Hong Kong cohort were in advance of theBeijing cohort. The current study followed up some children from the Hong Kongand Beijing cohorts of Li and Rao’s (2000) study, to ascertain whether the HongKong cohort who had received early formal literacy instruction were still in advancethree years later, when compared with the Beijing cohort without formal literacyinstruction. It was possible that the Hong Kong children’s ‘early bloom’ had faded orthat the Beijing children gained skills rapidly at primary school so that little differ-ence would be evident between the cohorts three years later. If the two cohorts werefound to be equal in literacy skill development, then support would be found for theposition that espouses delay of Chinese literacy instruction until children are aboutsix years of age.
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Method
Participants
The target groups for the current study were the 160 children aged four years and sixmonths to five years and six months in the initial study (time 1) by Li and Rao (2000)(mean age = five years, standard deviation = 12 months). Eighty-eight children fromthe original cohort were successfully recruited to participate in the current study (time2). The Beijing children were drawn from four randomly selected early childhoodsettings catering for middle-class families in the Western District, and the Hong Kongchildren were from four early childhood settings catering for middle-class familieslocated in three different areas (Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territo-ries). Five children from each class were selected at random to participate in the studywith their parents’ permission (Li & Rao, 2000).
The cohorts in the current study consisted of 44 children in Beijing and 44 in HongKong. The participants in the current study were aged between seven years and sixmonths and eight years and six months (mean age = eight years and one month,standard deviation = 12 months). Accordingly, age differences between the childrenof seven years and six months and eight years and six months were analysed andcontrolled in the data processing. In Beijing, the cohort of 44 children was drawnfrom 23 classes in 12 schools, which made the ratios of student to class 1.9 and ofstudent to school 3.7. In Hong Kong, the cohort of 44 children was drawn from 27classes in 15 schools, which made the ratios of student to class 1.6 and of student toschool 2.9. The children were assessed again and, for most of the current analyses,data were complete for 88 children.
The other participants of the initial study were not included in the current studybecause we were not able to trace them back. As shown in Table 1, however, thoseincluded had non-significant differences in mean literacy scores from those in theoriginal sample, and there were no other significant differences between the groups
Table 1. Means and standard deviations for the PPCLS scores at time 1 and time 2 in the Beijing and Hong Kong samples
Time 1 Time 2
Sample nAge
(years) MeanStandard deviation
Age (years) Mean
Standard deviation
Beijing 44 5 14.91 4.86 8 47.45 21.43Original sample 80 5 15.30 5.76 – – –Compare means t = 0.53 P > 0.50
Hong KongOriginal sampleCompare means 44 5 22.10 11.50 8 96.65 41.67
80 5 24.13 14.43 – – –t = 0.94 P > 0.10
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Early Chinese literacy 447
with regard to the home and school literacy practice and the basic demographic vari-ables; thus the sample attrition was not a major source of bias in the current study(see Li & Rao, 2000 for further details).
Parental education attainment in the two societies varied widely. Over 50% ofBeijing mothers received university-level education whereas only 10% of Hong Kongmothers did, which reflects the significant but similar difference in the universityentrance rate between Beijing (52%) and Hong Kong (16%) (Li, 2000). Over 90%of Beijing mothers spoke Putonghua at home; most Hong Kong mothers spoke eitherCantonese (over 70%) or both Cantonese and English (over 25%). Teacher educa-tional attainment in the two societies ranged from completion of junior secondaryschool to undergraduate degree. The teachers in Beijing are better than those in HongKong in the nature, level and time spent on professional training. The mean years ofeducation and professional training for Beijing and Hong Kong teachers are 12.72/4.63 and 11.19/2.24, respectively.
Measures
Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale. Children were tested with thePreschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale (PPCLS) in the first two weeks ofMay by the research assistants who had been trained to be reliable examiners. Theinstrument is comprised of four subscales: subscale A, Picture–Character Matching(character identification); subscale B, Listen-and-Point (visual and auditorydiscrimination); subscale C, Point-and-Read (word recognition); and subscale D,Read-and-Say (expressive vocabulary). Two hundred testing items were generatedfrom the Chinese language syllabuses for primary schools in Beijing, Hong Kongand Singapore. Subscales A and B each consisted of 25 multiple-choice items. Everyitem had one target character and three distracters chosen for graphic, phonetic andsemantic similarities. Subscales C and D comprised 150 testing items presented ingroups of five according to the rate of utilisation and degree of difficulty. ThePPCLS was found to be a reliable and valid measure of Chinese literacy in otherstudies (Li, 1999; Li & Rao, 2000, 2005; Chow & McBride-Chang, 2003). ThePPCLS also has characteristics of a developmental scale as older children obtainedsignificantly higher scores than younger children. Therefore, the total PPCLS scorewas regarded as the indicator of a child’s Chinese literacy attainment and was useddirectly in the data analyses. A full description of these subscales is available in Liand Rao (2000).
Home Literacy Environment Index. The Home Literacy Environment Index (HLEI)was developed to elicit information on home reading resources, quality and quantityof parent–child interactions, parental beliefs about and involvements in Chineseliteracy. It consisted of 27 questions and most of the items were rated on a five-pointscale. At time 1, one parent of each of the children completed the HLEI (seeAppendix).
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Classroom Literacy Environment Index. The Classroom Literacy Environment Index(CLEI) was developed to tap teacher’s beliefs and practices related to Chineseliteracy, classroom literacy resources, reading strategies and teacher–child interac-tions. Most of the items were rated on a five-point scale. At time 1, altogether 32 classteachers (16 for each society) of the 160 children completed the CLEI. As shown inthe Appendix, the HLEI and CLEI contain 22 items that are identical in nature.
Results
Using 2 (society) × 2 (age) × 2 (child gender) as between-subject factors, weconducted a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with the subscale scores ofthe PPCLS at time 1 (age five) and time 2 (age eight) as dependent variables, follow-up analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with the subscale scores as dependent variables,and an ANOVA on the total PPCLS score. The MANOVA and ANOVAs on thePPCLS total score and subscales scores at time 1 and time 2 showed the same patternof results. There were significant main effects for age and society. Unlike the othersubscales, Expressive Vocabulary did not differ across either age or society. Wedecided to focus on the total PPCLS score to examine the influences of early teachingon later literacy attainment, and follow-up tests are reported for this variable. As therewere no gender differences on the PPCLS, the data for boys and girls were pooled forsubsequent analyses.
Societal differences in Chinese literacy attainments at time 1 and time 2
The descriptive statistics for the 88 children on the measure of Chinese literacyattainments at time 1 and time 2 are reported in Table 1. Using 2 (society) × 2 (age)as between-subject factors, a MANOVA was conducted with the PPCLS total scoresat time 1 and time 2 as dependent variables. Overall, the MANOVA results indicatedthe following: there were significant main effects of age at time 1 [F (1,86) = 39.29,p < 0.001, η2 = 0.329, power = 1.00], and time 2 [F (1,86) = 90.01, p < 0.001, η2 =0.704, power = 1.00]; and there were significant main effects of society at time 1 [F(1,86) = 10.18, p < 0.005, η2 = 0.113, power = 0.89] and time 2 [F (1,88) = 68.24,p < 0.001, η2 = 0.460, power = 1.00]. Further t tests indicated that older childrendiffered significantly from younger children in both samples, and the same group chil-dren did significantly better in PPCLS at time 2 than they did at time 1. Specifically,the Hong Kong children significantly outperformed their counterparts in Beijing attime 1 and time 2 (see Figure 1).Figure 1. Mean PPCLS scores at time 1 and time 2 in the Beijing ( n = 44) and Hong Kong (n = 44) samples
Societal differences in Chinese literacy practices
Informal literacy activities. The majority of teachers in Beijing (95.0%) and HongKong (70.5%) did set a definite time for reading Chinese stories to their children,whereas few parents in Beijing (34.1%) and less in Hong Kong (15.0%) did so athome. The majority of teachers (75%) and parents (70.5%) in Beijing indicated that
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Early Chinese literacy 449
the typical duration of each reading session was 15–30 minutes, but most of theteachers (87.5%) and many parents (45.0%) in Hong Kong reported that their eachreading session lasted less than 15 minutes. Significant societal differences werefound between Hong Kong and Beijing teachers [F (1,86) = 15.02, p < 0.001].
The children in Beijing (77.3%) and Hong Kong (75.0%) had the same opportu-nity to witness their parents’ reading at least once a day. But there were significantsocietal differences in the number of Chinese books available for children both athome [F (1,86) = 25.72, p < 0.001] and in the classroom [F (1,86) = 28.98, p <0.001]. In Beijing, 77.2% teachers and 63.7% parents reported that they had morethan 30 Chinese books available for children, whereas 77.5% parents and 90%teachers in Hong Kong said they had less than 30 Chinese books. Most teachers inBeijing (81.8%) refreshed the bookshelf for children once a month, whereas theteachers in Hong Kong (90%) did so once a half-year or even a year. Significantsocietal differences were also found in the frequency of refreshing the bookshelf in theclassroom [F (1,86) = 3.83, p < 0.05].
Formal literacy activities. One-half of the parents in Hong Kong (55%) reported thatthey had taught their children to read at home for one year and more, whereas mostBeijing parents (77.3%) said they had not yet done so. Significant difference wasfound in formal literacy activities at home [F (1,86) = 11.05, p < 0.001]. Most Beijingparents (70.5%) did not teach child to write at home but the majority of parents in
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Time 1 Time 2
PPC
LS
Scor
es Beijing
Hong Kong
Figure 1. Mean PPCLS scores at time 1 and time 2 in the Beijing (n = 44) and Hong Kong (n = 44) samples
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450 H. Li et al.
Hong Kong (67.5%) did teach their child to write, and the difference was significant[F (1,85) = 32.31, p < 0.001].
Most of the early childhood teachers in Hong Kong (77.5%) had a teaching planand most teachers followed a specific program to teach Chinese literacy (97.5%), butrelatively fewer Beijing teachers had a plan (47.7%) or followed a literacy program(68.2%). Few teachers in Beijing (11.4%) taught the children younger than five yearsto write Chinese characters, whereas all the teachers in Hong Kong did so [F (1,86)= 18.53, p < 0.001].
Correlations of child, home and school literacy and PPCLS scores
Data reduction was obtained by conducting two factor analyses on the measures ofHLEI and CLEI for the Beijing and Hong samples, respectively. As shown inTable 2, the principal component analysis with varimax rotation yielded four majorfactors on the HLEI: exposure to reading (factor 1), reading strategies (factor 2),direct literacy teaching (factor 4 in Beijing and factor 3 in Hong Kong), and readingresources (factor 3 in Beijing and factor 4 in Hong Kong). Therefore, the scores offactor 1 that could explain the 15.7% variations in Beijing and 18.6% in Hong Kongsamples were used as the measure of informal home literacy activities, respectively.The factor scores of direct literacy teaching (factor 4 in Beijing and factor 3 in HongKong) were employed as the measure of formal home literacy activities. The samepatterns of results were found in the factor analyses on CLEI in the Beijing and HongKong samples. Significant differences between the Beijing and Hong Kong sampleswere found in the informal and formal literacy activities at home or in the classroom[F values > 11.03, p values < 0.001].
A two-tailed Spearman correlation analysis was conducted to explore the possiblerelationships among the age of child, maternal education, teacher’s qualification,home and school literacy and children’s literacy attainments. As shown in Table 3 allother correlations were significant (p values < 0.05), except for the correlationbetween maternal educational attainment, home reading resources, home and schoolreading strategies and time 1 and time 2 literacy scores for both samples; the correla-tion between time 1 and time 2 PPCLS scores, between the age of child and time 1scores, between teacher’s qualification, exposure to reading in classroom and directliteracy teaching in classroom and time 2 scores for Beijing sample; and the correla-tion between classroom reading resources and time 1 and time 2 PPCLS scores forthe Hong Kong sample.
No significant correlation was found in Beijing or Hong Kong between exposure toreading and direct literacy teaching, indicating that parents/teachers who frequentlyread books to their child did not necessarily teach their child to read and write. Inter-estingly, two patterns of correlation emerged in the intercorrelations of PPCLS scoresat time 1 and time 2 in Beijing (r = 0.28, p = 0.668) and in Hong Kong (r = 0.84, p< 0.001). Besides, a significant correlation between the age of child and the years ofschooling was found in Beijing (r = 0.79, p < 0.001) and Hong Kong (r = 0.72, p <0.001).
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Contributors to Chinese literacy attainment at age eight
The relative contribution of early formal literacy activities to Chinese literacy attain-ment at age eight was determined by conducting a set of hierarchical multiple regres-sion analyses, with the PPCLS score at time 2 as the dependent variable and the twosites as the dummy variable (0, Beijing; 1, Hong Kong). Results are presented inTable 4. A raw score was used, and therefore age was controlled and entered first.Second, the dummy variable of sites was brought into account. Next, maternal educa-tion level and teacher qualification were entered. Fourth, home and school informalliteracy were entered for the analyses. In model 5, home and school formal literacywere counted in.
Table 2. Factor loadings for the HLEI in Beijing and Hong Kong at time 1 (n = 320)
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4
Beijing (n = 160)Frequency of parent–child reading 0.72Have a routine storytime 0.56Weekly exposure to reading 0.52Have preparation prior to reading 0.81Take approaches to attract child 0.69Have follow-up activities after reading 0.59Diversity of reading materials 0.50Frequency of refreshing bookshelf 0.79Number of children books 0.51Years of teaching child to write 0.73Years of teaching child to read 0.57Eigenvalue 5.17 2.59 2.14 1.82% of variance 15.7 7.9 6.5 5.5Cumulative percentage 15.7 23.5 30.0 35.6
Hong Kong (n = 160)Frequency of parent–child reading 0.71Have a routine storytime 0.65Weekly exposure to reading 0.62Have preparation prior to reading 0.75Take approaches to attract child 0.74Diversity of reading materials 0.65Year of teaching child to write 0.84Year of teaching child to read 0.75Frequency of refreshing bookshelf 0.71Number of children book 0.54Set up a reading corner 0.51Eigenvalue 5.39 2.78 2.10 1.95% of variance 18.6 9.6 7.3 6.7Cumulative percentage 18.6 28.2 35.4 42.2
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The significant regression models for this longitudinal sample indicated the follow-ing: the age of the child itself significantly contributed to 57.4% of the variation inChinese literacy attainments at time 2; the dummy variable of sites contributed to theprediction of 20.4% variations in literacy attainments at age eight (given the settingof Beijing = 0 and Hong Kong = 1, the significant regression coefficient indicated that
Table 3. Correlations between child variables, home and school literacy and PPCLS scores at time 1 and time 2
Beijing Hong Kong
Time 1 Time 2 Time 1 Time 2
Time 1 – 0.18 – 0.84***Age of child 0.23 0.73*** 0.87*** 0.89***Maternal education 0.18 0.16 0.08 0.12Teacher’s qualification 0.64*** 0.27 0.74*** 0.60***Home reading resources 0.12 0.03 0.14 0.12Exposure to reading at home 0.09 0.02 0.34* 0.33*Parental reading strategies 0.06 0.01 0.27 0.21Direct literacy teaching at home 0.40** 0.36* 0.56*** 0.49**Classroom reading resources −0.43** 0.41** 0.09 0.13Exposure to reading in classroom 0.35* 0.15 0.72*** 0.55***Teacher’s reading strategies 0.26 0.11 0.21 0.11Direct literacy teaching in classroom 0.42** 0.03 0.60*** 0.70***
Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.005, ***p < 0.001.
Table 4. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting Chinese literacy attainments at school level (n = 88)
Variable Beta R2 ∆R2 F
Model 1 0.574 115.916***1. Age of child 0.758***
Model 2 0.778 0.204 78.382***2. Site 0.454***
Model 3 0.778 0.000 0.0833. Maternal education 0.0184. Teacher qualification 0.022
Model 4 0.779 0.001 2.0315. Informal home literacy 0.1116. Informal classroom literacy 0.092
Model 5 0.806 0.027 24.017*7. Formal home literacy 0.113*8. Formal classroom literacy 0.156*
Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.005, ***p < 0.001.
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the Hong Kong cohort achieved significantly higher literacy attainments than theircounterparts in Beijing); maternal education and teacher qualification were not ableto predict literacy scores at time 2; neither home nor classroom informal literacyexperiences could contribute to the prediction of literacy attainments at time 2; buthome/school formal literacy significantly contributed to 2.7% of the variation inChinese literacy scores at age eight, after controlling for the age, site, parental educa-tion, teacher qualifications and home/school informal literacy.
Discussion
The present study was designed to follow two cohorts to ascertain whether the HongKong children maintained their early lead in literacy skills when compared with theBeijing counterparts at age eight. The Beijing cohort had a more favorable languageenvironment, experienced more informal literacy practices and tended to haveparents and teachers of higher levels of education in comparison with the Hong Kongcohort. But the results indicated that the Hong Kong cohort excelled over theirBeijing counterparts in Chinese literacy test at age five and age eight, repeatedly. Thissection will discuss these unexpected findings, their psycholinguistic, pedagogical andsociocontextual accounts, and the educational implications.
The psycholinguistic and pedagogical accounts
It is interesting to note that the Beijing cohort was immersed in a supportive literacy-rich environment that offered informal literacy experiences but no direct teaching ofliteracy until children entered primary school at age six. In addition, the Beijingcohort had higher levels of maternal education, teachers’ qualifications and favorablelanguage context. However, the Beijing cohort achieved a lower level of literacyoutcomes when compared with their Hong Kong counterparts. And the early start toformal literacy in Hong Kong was associated with higher literacy scores later atprimary school.
Psycholinguistically, this finding might be explained by the difficult orthography ofthe Chinese language. Siegel and Ryan (1988) suggest that the development ofreading skills is a multifaceted process involving the integration of several autono-mous subsystems, such as phonology, orthography, word recognition, syntax andsemantics. Further, Gholamain and Geva’s (1999) ‘script dependent’ hypothesisasserts that accurate word-recognition skills develop more slowly in languages with anirregular orthography such as English, when compared with regular orthographiessuch as German, Persian and Russian. Specifically, German has a fairly transparentorthography and is relatively easy to read (see Wimmer, 1993, 1996), whereasEnglish, French and Chinese are usually regarded as having deep orthography indifferent writing systems. The relatively complicated nature of English, French andChinese orthographies might make learning to read more difficult, and early readinginstruction might be more beneficial to children’s acquisition of these languages. Forexample, Li (2003) found that reading Chinese characters involved phonological,
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graphical and semantic processing, and therefore the reading acquisition in Chinesemight be more difficult than that of other languages—the dominance of differentreading error types in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore preschoolers reflected thevarying sociolinguistic contexts in which character acquisition took place.
Accordingly, it is suggested that the complex nature of Chinese orthography mightmean that informal literacy experiences may be necessary but not sufficient in theacquisition of Chinese literacy. The finding that Hong Kong children maintainedtheir higher levels of literacy attainments at age eight may indicate that early formalliteracy experiences have long-term beneficial effects on children’s Chinese literacydevelopment. Coincidently, a large study (Shu et al., 2001 ) of the relation betweenhome-literacy environments and first-grade and fourth-grade Beijing children’sChinese literacy development concluded that: ‘children from families in whichparents began to teach characters and began to read to children at an early ageperformed better in the reading tests than those from families in which parents beganto teach characters and to read to children at later ages’ (p. 219). These effects weresignificant for the fourth-graders as well as the first-graders. These mutually reinforc-ing findings indicate that informal literacy activities may be necessary but notsufficient to facilitate Chinese literacy development, whereas formal literacy approachdoes.
Pedagogically, the finding that early formal, rather than informal, literacy experi-ences correlated with higher levels of literacy achievement at age eight should notbe interpreted to mean that informal activities do not foster children’s languageskills. However, it is suggested that formal and informal literacy experiences func-tion differently and may support different aspects of children’ language develop-ment. For example, exposure to books has been shown related to vocabularydevelopment and oral comprehension abilities (Sénéchal et al., 1998; Sénéchal &LeFevre, 2002). Similarly, the findings of Canadian studies conducted by Evanset al. (2000) and Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) indicated that informal home liter-acy activities were related to the development of children’s receptive language, andformal literacy experiences were associated with the development of emergentliteracy. These possible associations were not investigated in the present study, andfurther study with more dependent variables and a larger sample would be informa-tive.
Continuity between preschool and primary school experiences
It is very interesting to note that significant correlations were found between theChinese literacy scores at age five (preschool) and age eight (primary) in the HongKong cohort but not in Beijing. The continuity and discontinuity of literacy experi-ences between home, kindergarten and school might contribute to this finding.
According to Mayfield’s (2001, p. 416) definition, ‘continuity is the way anddegree to which one program relates to and builds on another for the benefit of thechildren … discontinuity, on the other hand, results when there is a mismatch’. TheBeijing cohort were provided with enriched literacy environments at home and
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Early Chinese literacy 455
preschool where informal literacy activities were supported and formal teaching wasnot allowed. However, a major change occurred as soon as the children beganprimary school at age six, where they were immersed in a program of intensive andformal training of literacy skills. It is inferred that the Beijing cohort experiencedcontinuity in their literacy learning experiences at home and preschool, and disconti-nuity between their home/preschool and school experiences when they began primary1. For example, the children experienced learning through imitating a model at home,learning through play in preschool and then learning through didactic teaching in theprimary school (Wu et al., 1999). It is suggested that further studies could investigatethe effects of this discontinuity of children’s experiences found in the present study.
By contrast, the children in Hong Kong experienced a continuous and cohesive setof formal teaching experiences at home, preschool and school from a very early age.Parents and teachers in Hong Kong believe that early formal teaching is essential tolater success and, typically, mutual support is given to the adults, whether teachers orparents (Li & Rao, 2000). The continuity of literacy experiences may serve to ease thetransitions between home, preschool and school, and accordingly might have contrib-uted to the significant correlation between their time 1 and time 2 scores. Further-more, the continuity horizontally between home and school (Li & Rao, 2000) andvertically between preschool and primary (Li & Rao, 2005) in literacy practices mighthave contributed to Hong Kong’s children’s literacy attainments.
Furthermore, it was found that discontinuity between home and school couldresult when parents had different philosophies and expectations from the teachers(Graue, 1993; McClelland, 1995). Observed evidence indicated that very similarexpectations were held by the parents and teachers in Hong Kong concerning thedirect teaching of literacy skills at home, preschool and school (Li & Rao, 2005). It issuggested that the close alignment of expectations held by the parents and teachers inHong Kong may contribute to the child’s literacy attainments by providing cohesionand continuity in the child’s literacy experiences. This implies that more improve-ments to enhance the continuity between home and school and that betweenpreschool and primary are due in Beijing. And it is time for the Beijing Governmentto rethink and reframe the policy on Chinese literacy education.
The present study, however, has three major limitations. First, the initial samplewas drawn from middle socioeconomic status families and the number of participantsin the current study was small. Second, formal and informal literacy experiences mayfacilitate different aspects of language development, and the narrow scope of Chineseliteracy measures in the present study may not review the whole picture of the rela-tionship between early literacy experience and later literacy outcomes. For instance,oral comprehension that favors informal literacy experiences were not measured inthe present study. Finally, the home and classroom literacy environments might havechanged during time 1 and time 2 but these were not investigated. Follow-up researchshould investigate a more complete set of literacy outcomes that may include factorssuch as the child’s motivation to read, confidence, enjoyment of reading, use ofprinted materials to gain information and knowledge, and the capacity to uselanguage creatively.
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In short, the findings of this study suggest that early formal literacy activities areassociated with later higher outcomes in the Chinese literacy test. These findingsshould be interpreted with caution at this stage as further investigation is required toanswer the questions that arose in the present study. In particular, conclusionsabout the efficacy of early formal literacy instruction and informal experiencesshould not be made without further evidence with a larger sample. It might bepossible that the complicated nature of Chinese orthography make early literacyinstruction particularly valuable in early literacy acquisition, and the close alignmentof expectations held by parents and teachers may contribute to children’s literacyattainments by providing cohesive and continuous literacy experiences. This findingimplies that more attention should be paid to the school–parent collaborations andthe preschool–primary transitions to eradicate the discontinuity, horizontally andvertically. By doing this, early literacy education (including formal and informalliteracy activities) might be able, currently and longitudinally, to facilitate children’sliteracy development.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Nirmala Rao, Dr McBride-Chang and Dr KarenDiamond for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
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Appendix. Major questions of the HLEI and the CLEI
1. Do your children have a reading corner at home (in classroom)?2. How many Chinese books are currently available at home (in classroom)?3. How often are the books on display changed?4. Do you set a definite time for reading Chinese books/stories to your children?5. How often do you read Chinese books/stories to your children at home (in class-
room) this year?6. How long does each session of reading Chinese typically last?7. Who typically selects the books/stories to be read?8. How many times during the same session is a Chinese book read aloud?9. How do you typically get the children involved in Chinese reading?10. Do you typically have any story/book activities prior to reading Chinese aloud?11. Do you have any follow-up activities after the reading of a Chinese book?12. When did you (or teacher) start to read Chinese books/stories to your children?13. When did your children start to be taught to read Chinese characters at home (in
kindergarten)?14. When did your children start to be taught to write Chinese characters at home
(in kindergarten)?15. Which kind of activities do you typically use to teach Chinese literacy?16. Do you follow a specific approach in teaching Chinese literacy?17. As a parent (teacher), do you listen to them read?18. Which kind of materials do you prefer to use for teaching your children Chinese
literacy?19. How much time do you spend each day talking with your children?20. How often did your children see parents (teachers) reading Chinese at home (in
classroom)?21. What is your main purpose of reading stories/books to children?22. What, in your opinion, is the main reason for teaching children to read and write
Chinese characters in early childhood?
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