This article was downloaded by: [Zhang, Dongbo] On: 9 May 2011 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 937423945] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Bilingual Research Journal Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t909204797 Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge Development: A Study of Young Learners of Chinese as a Heritage Language Dongbo Zhanga; Keiko Kodab a Nanyang Technological University, b Carnegie Mellon University, Online publication date: 09 May 2011 To cite this Article Zhang, Dongbo and Koda, Keiko(2011) 'Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge Development: A Study of Young Learners of Chinese as a Heritage Language', Bilingual Research Journal, 34: 1, 4 — 18 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/15235882.2011.568591 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2011.568591 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Bilingual Research Journal, 34: 4–18, 2011 Copyright © the National Association for Bilingual Education ISSN: 1523-5882 print / 1523-5890 online DOI: 10.1080/15235882.2011.568591 RESEARCH ARTICLES Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge Development: A Study of Young Learners of Chinese as a Heritage Language Dongbo Zhang Nanyang Technological University Keiko Koda Carnegie Mellon University This study examined young Heritage Language (HL) learners’ home literacy environment and its impact on HL word-knowledge development, focusing on a group of Chinese–English bilingual children learning to read in Chinese as a Heritage Language in the United States. A home literacy survey revealed that parents mostly used HL to talk to children, while learners preferred to use English or a mixture of English and HL to talk to their parents. Learners’ HL reading practice at home showed a schoolwork orientation. There was a significant positive correlation between parents’ language use and learners’ HL vocabulary breadth; learners’ schoolwork-related reading practice was also positively correlated with HL word knowledge. However, no significant relations were observed between independent and shared reading unrelated to schoolwork and learners’ word knowledge. These findings are discussed in relation to the importance of school materials in HL literacy development and a possible threshold of frequency of schoolwork-unrelated reading that has to be passed for learners to be benefited. Dongbo Zhang is a research scientist at the Center for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He previously taught Chinese language and culture in the United States and English as a foreign language in China to college students. His research interests include bilingual children’s literacy acquisition and second-language acquisition. Keiko Koda is Professor of Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests include second-language reading and biliteracy acquisition. Her recent publications include Insight Into Second Language Reading (2005) and Learning to Read Across Languages (coedited with A. Zehler, 2008). Address correspondence to Dongbo Zhang, Center for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616. E-mail: dongbo.zhang@nie.edu.sg CHL HOME LITERACY 5 Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 INTRODUCTION Reading development necessitates a set of language as well as cognitive skills (Adams, 1990; Metsala & Walley 1998). On the other hand, it is situated in a social context (Purcell-Gates, Jacobson, & Degener, 2004), and development of reading and its subskills requires extensive exposure to input, particularly print input. A large amount of research has shown that quantity and quality of children’s print experience have an impact on the development of emergent literacy skills and children’s literacy achievement in school (e.g., Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991). One central line of such research has focused particularly on the home literacy environment and examined how children’s out-of-school literacy experience, such as children’s independent reading and shared reading practice with parents, influences the development of reading skills (e.g., Foy & Mann, 2003; Griffin & Morrison, 1997). Not surprisingly, many studies have found that individual difference in home literacy experience is a good source of variation in children’s reading ability. It should be noted, however, that most studies on the home literacy environment and its impact on reading development are focused on monolingual children. Very limited research in this line has so far been conducted on bilingual children’s literacy acquisition, particularly in children’s Heritage Language (HL). Given bilingual children’s limited exposure to both oral language and print in their community and school, home literacy environment presumably plays an even more important role in HL literacy development. This seems to be supported by a few case studies on adult HL learners’ retrospection of their home literacy experience in childhood (e.g., Tse, 2001). However, the evidence is far from systematic. On one hand, little has been known about how HL literacy is being practiced in bilingual children’s homes; on the other hand, a clear relationship between HL literacy environment at home and learners’ literacy skills is yet to be obtained. Therefore, by looking at a group of young Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) learners learning to read in a weekend school in the United States, this study aimed to investigate home literacy experience of immigrant children and its relationship with children’s HL word knowledge. HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT AND READING ACQUISITION In the history of literacy research, home literacy environment has been a packed term with a set of factors that are related to children’s literacy experience at home, such as parents’ education level, socioeconomic status (or SES), number of books, parents’ reading behaviors, parent–child shared reading, and child independent reading. Researchers in the past decades have looked into a variety of such factors and their impact on children’s development of emergent literacy skills and their school literacy success (Baker, Fernández-Fein, Scher, & Williams, 1998; Philips & Lonigan, 2005). Most studies, however, paid close attention to two factors, namely, parent–child joint literacy practice and children’s independent literacy practice, both of which have been found to be good predictors of literacy development among monolingual children. Bennett, Weigel, and Martin (2002), for example, examined the role of family in the development of language and literacy skills in preschool children from middle-income families, with the objective to test the three models proposed in Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Hemphill, and Goodman (1991), namely, Family as Educator, Resilient Family, and Home–School Partnership. Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 6 ZHANG AND KODA The Family as Educator model concerns literacy environment of the home, direct teaching, creating opportunities to learn, parental education, and parental expectations; the Resilient Family model highlights family organization, family emotional climate, and family stress; the Home– School Partnership (called Parent–Child Care Partnership in Bennett et al., 2002) includes such variables as formal parent–school involvement, frequency of contact with teachers, homework help by parents, nature of parent–child interaction during homework, and school attendance and punctuality. Bennett et al. (2002) found that after controlling for the other two models, the Family as Educator model was significantly related to children’s book knowledge and oral language skills; neither the Resilient Family model nor the Parent–Child Care Partnership significantly contributed to children’s book knowledge and oral comprehension and communication skills, after the effects of the other two models were accounted for. Sénéchal, LeFevre, Thomas, and Daley (1998) differentiated between two types of parental involvement, that is, parent–child shared reading of storybooks and parents’ direct instruction on reading and writing, in their study on Canadian English-speaking children’s reading acquisition. In the study, parents of middle-class kindergartners and first graders reported their knowledge of titles and authors of children’s storybooks as an indicator of children’s exposure to storybooks, and the frequency of parent teaching on word reading and printing. Both kindergartners and first graders were tested during the first half of their school year on their oral-language skills (listening comprehension, receptive vocabulary, and phonological awareness) and written-language skills (print concepts, alphabet knowledge, invented spelling, and decoding). The first graders were also tested on their word-recognition skill at the end of the school year. The study revealed different patterns of association between the two types of parental involvement and children’s oral- and written-language skills (for both groups) and with early word reading (for first graders). For both groups of children, joint reading significantly predicted oral-language skills, but not writtenlanguage skills; parent teaching significantly predicted written-language skills, after controlling for children’s oral-language skills. In addition, parent teaching did not uniquely contribute to first graders’ word reading at the end of Grade 1; over and above parent teaching, joint reading did not contribute significantly to word reading either. In contrast to studies on parental involvement that were more concerned with the development of emergent literacy skills among preschoolers, studies on the relationship between independent reading-related activities and literacy acquisition focused largely on school-age children. This differential choice of focus seems to be reasonable, given that preschool children are not quite able to perform independent reading, but older children who are receiving formal literacy education in school, particularly those in later elementary grades, are relatively competent to do so. Anderson et al. (1988) asked 155 fifth graders, mostly from middle-class families, to keep a daily record of the time they spent on literacy-related activities outside school in a period ranging from 2 to 6 months. Large variance was observed in children’s everyday out-of-school literacy-related behaviors. For example, the children who were at the 90th percentile in the amount of book reading spent nearly five times as many minutes per day reading books as those at the 50th percentile, and over 200 times as many minutes as those at the 10th percentile. Of all the activities, reading books seemed to be the strongest predictor of children’s reading proficiency, including reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and reading speed. Time spent on book reading was also the best predictor of a child’s growth as a reader from the second to the fifth grade. Thus, overall, the study provided clear support for the importance of child independent reading in the development of reading skills. CHL HOME LITERACY 7 Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 LITERACY DEVELOPMENT IN A HERITAGE LANGUAGE The studies reviewed previously, though approaching children’s home literacy experience in different veins, are all supportive of the influence of home environment on children’s development of literacy and its related skills. However, they focused only on monolingual children learning to read in their first language. A question remains as to what the relationship is like among bilingual children, particularly in relation to literacy development in the Heritage Language. It is now a well-recognized fact that an increasingly large number of children who are studying in American schools come from families where languages other than English are spoken. The 2000 U.S. census shows that around 18% of the population aged between 5 and 17, or about 10 million, spoke a language other than English at home. Not surprisingly, the surge of languageminority student population has led to increased attention among policy makers, practitioners as well as researchers, in the past decades on how these students’ English oral and literacy competencies should be cultivated to meet their social and educational needs in the country (August & Shanahan, 2006). More recently, however, increasing attention has been directed to the development of minority students’ mother tongue or their HL skills and literacy competencies (e.g., Chevalier, 2004; He & Xiao, 2008; Hornberger & Wang, 2007; Valdes, 2005). The increase of interest in HLs and HL learners among the research and the immigrant communities comes from at least two sources. First, within the assimilationist ideology, English is regarded as the de facto official language of the nation; minority students’ home language, therefore, “must be eradicated because they impede the assimilation of language minority groups” (Wang, 2007, p. 30). This, however, has led to gradual loss of minority children’s primary language in immigrant communities. Wong-Fillmore (1991) found that as immigrant children learned English, the pattern of language use changed in their homes, and the younger they were when they learned English, the greater the effect. Therefore, minority communities began to take action and “reverse language shift” (Fishman, 1991), for example, by establishing community or weekend schools to cultivate children’s ethnic language and literacy competencies and maintain the cultural heritage of their ethnic group (Zhou & Li, 2003). The second source that has led to an increase of interest in HLs and HL learners comes from the shift of attitude toward the role of the heritage language, both in the community of bilingualism and second-language acquisition research (August & Shanahan, 2006; Valdes, 2005) and in the national discourse of foreign language policy (Wang, 2007). In the research community, first-language or HL skills are now considered as a resource of bilingual children that could be utilized or transferred to facilitate acquisition of second language and literacy (August & Shanahan, 2006; Koda, 2008). In the national discourse, HLs and their speakers began to be recognized as societal resources, and this “resource” ideology became more prevalent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Wang, 2007). For such reasons, an increasing amount of research has been conducted on HL learners and HL acquisition and education, covering a variety of topics, such as acquisition behaviors, identity systems, and curriculum and instruction issues (He & Xiao, 2008). Surprisingly, however, among this pool of studies very few have looked at HL literacy environment in learners’ homes and its relation to HL literacy acquisition, particularly among young children. In a large survey, Carreira and Kagan (2011) asked adult HL learners from diverse home language backgrounds to report on their language and literacy behaviors in the past and present. Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 8 ZHANG AND KODA Most respondents reported that they used HL most often in early childhood, and only a small proportion reported using only English. However, the pattern dramatically shifted toward English or a combination of English and HL as they started schooling. In addition, about 30% of the respondents reported that their parents never read to them in their HL when they were a child. Corroborating Carreira and Kagan, Zhang (2008) found that second-generation Chinese immigrant children often had a good command of their HL in lower grades and were usually happy about learning it; however, their enthusiasm in HL use and learning clearly waned as they progressed in their American school. The lack of parental involvement in HL reading was also supported by Li (2006a), where about two thirds of the Chinese immigrant parents participating in a questionnaire survey reported that they hardly read, or only once or twice in a month, to their child in Chinese. Because none of the studies quoted directly related HL use and literacy practice patterns with learners’ HL proficiency, no information, however, could be drawn about how home literacy experience impacts HL literacy acquisition. Tse (2001) partly addressed this issue by exploring the factors that supported the attainment of relatively high levels of HL literacy among some U.S.-raised adults. In the interviews, the participants were asked to recall what the HL literacy environments in their parents’ homes and the communities were like and how they interacted with HL print when they were growing up. The participants reported the availability of a variety of HL print materials in their homes. Most of them attributed their high levels of HL literacy to independent pleasure reading of such materials as magazines, novels, and comic books, but participating in religious worships, parent modeling of pleasure reading, and shared reading with parents seemed to also have played important roles in their attainment of high levels of HL literacy. Xiao (2008) compared home literacy environment of CHL learners of three proficiency levels, defined as the number of years of Chinese instruction in an American university. In the study, the participants were asked to report on their home literacy environment by recalling the availability of Chinese resources, shared literacy activities with parents, and independent literacy activities when they were a child. It was found that advanced CHL learners had significantly more book resources than those at the lower-proficiency levels. In terms of the different types of shared activities with parents, such as book reading, character writing, and games, advanced learners also excelled their beginning and intermediate counterparts in frequency of practice. Similar patterns were also found in independent reading of books, newspapers, journals, etc. Although overall findings of Xiao (2008) suggest differences in home literacy environment between the three groups of learners with different proficiency levels, this should not be taken as evidence that directly supports a positive impact of home literacy environment on HL literacy achievement for the simple reason that HL proficiency in the study is likely to be a reflection of learners’ instructional experience only. A clear understanding of the relationship between home literacy environment and HL achievement necessitates an investigation of learners with similar levels of instructional experience. In addition, most of the studies previously reviewed need improvement in design in that their use of adult learners’ retrospection of childhood experiences as evidence of early home literacy environment or print exposure may not be wholly reliable. A direct look at child HL learners would better answer how home literacy experience influences HL literacy acquisition. Therefore, by focusing on a group of young CHL learners learning to read in a weekend school, this study aimed to examine home literacy experience of HL learners and its relationship with HL word knowledge. Two questions were posed to guide this study: CHL HOME LITERACY 9 1. What is the pattern of CHL use at home between parents and children? How often is CHL literacy practiced independently by children and jointly with parents? 2. How are different factors of home literacy environment related to learners’ CHL word knowledge? METHOD Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 Participants Participants were 36 Chinese–English bilingual children learning Chinese in Grade 3 of a weekend Chinese school in western Pennsylvania. The weekend school was a community school that aimed to promote CHL language and literacy skills and Chinese cultural awareness in Chinesespeaking children in the local Chinese community. In the school, Mandarin Chinese was used as medium of instruction, and the simplified form of Chinese script was taught. Of the participants 45% were boys and 55% girls, with an average age of 9.12 years (SD = 1.22). Their grade in the mainstream American schools, where no opportunity was provided for Chinese language and literacy learning, was about 3.59 (SD = 1.24). About 85% of the learners were born in the United States, and the remaining 15%, all born in mainland China, reported coming to the United States before starting kindergarten. The children came largely from middle-class families; their parents were mostly professionals, such as doctors, research scientists, university professors, and engineers. Instruments Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire A questionnaire was used to elicit information from the children about their home environment with regard to CHL use and literacy practices. This questionnaire, administered in English, consisted of two parts: The first part included questions about the children’s background, such as age, birth place, and so on; the second part asked questions related to the children’s CHL experience at home that covered language use, child independent reading, and joint reading activities. For home language use, the children were asked to indicate the language they used to talk to their parents and their parents used to talk to them (1 = mostly English; 2 = both English and Chinese; 3 = mostly Chinese). For joint reading practice in CHL, two questions were asked: (a) How often does your parent (or older brother/sister) help you with your Chinese homework?; and (b) How often does your parent (or older brother/sister) read Chinese books (not related to Chinese homework) with you? For both questions, the children were asked to indicate their frequency of practice by circling an appropriate choice (1 = very rarely or not at all; 2 = 1–2 times a month; 3 = 1–2 times a week; 4 = 3–4 times a week; 5 = daily). Thus, the higher the score, the more frequently a particular CHL reading activity is practiced. Information about children’s independent Chinese reading practice was also elicited with two questions: (a) How often do you read books related to Chinese schoolwork at home on your own; and (b) How often do you read books not related to Chinese schoolwork at home on your own? The frequency scale used for these two questions was the same as the one for the joint reading questions. 10 ZHANG AND KODA Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 Word-Knowledge Measures1 Two aspects of CHL word knowledge were measured: children’s knowledge of the structure of Chinese characters and their vocabulary breadth. Children’s character-structure knowledge was measured with a Radical Identification Task. The task required children to select a graphic component (i.e., semantic radical), from among four that carried the meaning of a target semantic–phonetic compound character. For example, the character is decomposed into four and . To select the correct answer, children had to know the basic structure components: of Chinese compound characters and the canonical position of a semantic radical. Thus, for the character , children should know that it is a compound character with the top–bottom structure, and is the graphic component (semantic radical) that carries the basic meaning of the character. Target characters in the test involved four positions of semantic radicals: on the left, on the right, on the top, and at the bottom. All target characters appeared in two-character words that were familiar to the children. There were altogether 20 test items and one practice item, with a maximum score of 20. Vocabulary breadth was measured with a yes/no checklist that required the children to indicate whether or not they knew the meaning of a word item. The checklist consisted of 120 twocharacter word items with 100 real words as hit and 20 nonwords as false alarm to adjust for guessing. Each of the nonwords included a noncharacter with legal radical-phonetic combination (e.g., ). Vocabulary knowledge score was calculated with the formula proposed by Anderson and Freebody (1983), which is built upon the proportion of hit (checking yes on a real word) and the proportion of false alarm (checking yes on a nonword). All instruments were printed on paper and administered to the children in their regular CHL classes. Children first worked on the home literacy survey, followed by the word knowledge tests. Clear instructions were provided for children before they formally worked on the survey and the tests, and the researcher was also around in class to answer children’s questions. RESULTS Home Literacy Environment Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of children’s responses to the questions related to their home literacy environment. Overall, parents seemed to mostly use Chinese to talk to their children (M = 2.56, SD = .61 for mother; M = 2.26, SD = .83 for father), while children mostly used English or both HL and English to talk to their parents (M = 1.81, SD = .74 for mother; M = 1.75, SD = .76 for father). As to independent reading practice, children frequently read books related to their schoolwork, such as textbooks and workbooks; the mean frequency of 1 A reviewer was concerned about whether the word-knowledge measures were related to the materials being taught in the participants’ CHL program. To clarify, the characters in the Radical Identification Task and the words in the Vocabulary Checklist Task were not specifically selected from the children’s CHL textbooks. These two tasks, which were modeled on previous ones for monolingual Chinese children (see Li, Anderson, Nagy, & Zhang, 2002; Ku & Anderson, 2003), were constructed to serve as measures of general character-structure knowledge and vocabulary breadth rather than textbook-specific knowledge. CHL HOME LITERACY 11 Language Use Child to Mother Child to Father Mother to Child Father to Child Independent Reading Related to Schoolwork Unrelated to Schoolwork Joint Reading Help on Homework Joint Book Reading (Unrelated to Schoolwork) Word Knowledge Radical Identification Vocabulary Breadth No. of Cases Mean SD 32 32 34 34 1.81 1.75 2.56 2.26 .74 .76 .61 .83 32 33 3.97 1.88 1.28 1.34 33 33 2.76 1.88 1.50 1.50 31 31 8.87 .41 4.68 .19 practice (M = 3.97, SD = 1.28) was close to 3–4 times a week. In sharp contrast, reading practice unrelated to schoolwork remained at a very low frequency level (M = 1.88, SD = 1.34), lower than 1–2 times a month. Parent/sibling–child joint reading practice showed similar patterns, but the frequency of practice was at a relatively lower level. Overall, parents or older siblings seemed not to help children with their HL homework very frequently, lower than 1–2 times a week (M = 2.76, SD = 1.50). In addition, parent/sibling–child joint reading unrelated to schoolwork was hardly frequent (M = 1.88, SD = 1.50): lower than 1–2 times a month. Figures 1–3 provide details about the proportional distributions of the various frequency levels of literacy practice reported by the learners. Because the frequency distribution of language use was similar for children’s communication with their mother and father, Figure 1 only provides the data about home language use between mother and child. As shown in the figure, more than 100 Mother to Child 80 Proportion Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics of Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge Child to Mother 60 40 20 0 mostly English both Languages mostly Chinese FIGURE 1 Patterns of home Heritage Language use. 12 ZHANG AND KODA 100 Related to Schoolwork Unrelated to Schoolwork Proportion 80 60 40 20 0 rarely 1–2 times a month 1–2 times a week 3–4 times a week daily 100 Help on Homework Unrelated to Schoolwork 80 Proportion Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 FIGURE 2 Patterns of child independent literacy practice. 60 40 20 0 rarely 1–2 times 1–2 times 3–4 times a month a week a week daily FIGURE 3 Patterns of parent/sibling–child joint literacy practice. 60% of the mothers mostly used Chinese to talk to their child, about one third used both Chinese and English, and only a very small proportion mostly used English. In contrast, less than 20% of the children mostly spoke Chinese to their parents; more than 40% of them preferred to use both languages, while about 37.5% mostly used English. With regard to child independent reading practice, as shown in Figure 2, about half of the children reported reading schoolwork-related materials every day. About 20% had this practice 3–4 times in weeks; only about 15% rarely did it or only 1–2 times in a month. In clear contrast, most children (more than 60%) reported that they rarely read materials unrelated to their schoolwork; only a very minor proportion of them had daily practice of this type of reading. Figure 3 shows the proportional distribution of different frequency levels of parent/sibling– child joint reading practice. More than half of the parents/older siblings helped children with their HL homework at least once in a week, but only a little more than 20% did this every day. In addition, about 27% of the parents/siblings rarely provided children with any help on their HL homework at all. With regard to parent/sibling–child shared reading of HL books not related to schoolwork, about two thirds of the parents/siblings rarely read with the children. Only about 15% did this practice on a daily basis. Taken together, these data seem to suggest that children’s CHL HOME LITERACY 13 HL reading at home was replete with schoolwork, and there was very limited reading unrelated to schoolwork, either independent reading of storybooks or reading together with their parents or older siblings. Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 Word Knowledge and Its Relationship with Home Literacy Experience This section presents children’s performance on the CHL word-knowledge tests, and its correlations with children’s home literacy experience. As shown in Table 1, Grade 3 CHL learners scored about 8.87 items correct (about 44%; SD = 4.68) on the Radical Identification Test. For vocabulary knowledge, M = .41, SD = .19. Table 2 provides the correlations between home literacy environment variables and word-knowledge measures. Language use of children and parents was significantly correlated with each other (r = .380, p < .05), suggesting the general tendency that children would use Chinese more, if their parents choose to communicate with them in Chinese. Neither of the language-use variables was significantly correlated with the frequency of different types of reading practice. Interestingly, children’s independent reading of schoolworkrelated materials was highly negatively correlated with their independent reading of materials unrelated to schoolwork (r = −.597, p < .01). It thus appears that children who practiced more schoolwork-based reading tended to read less frequently materials unrelated to schoolwork. In other words, the frequency of their independent reading seems to remain at a somewhat constant level. Regarding the relationship between home literacy experience and CHL word knowledge, it was found that parents’ language use with children was significantly correlated with children’s vocabulary breadth (r = .401, p < .01); however, it was not significantly correlated with children’s character structure knowledge (r = .154). The correlation table also shows a close, positive relation between children’s independent reading related to schoolwork and their radical identification ability (p = .414, p < .05), and between parents’ help on homework and children’s vocabulary knowledge (p = .408, p < .05). However, correlation was not significant, for both children’s independent reading related to schoolwork and vocabulary breadth (r = .173), and TABLE 2 Correlations Between Home Literacy Measures and CHL Word Knowledge 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CH_PA PA_CH INDP_SCH INDP_NSCH SH_HW SH_NSCH RADICAL VOCAB 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 – .380∗ −.197 .338 −.047 .241 .002 .086 – −.036 .161 .176 .106 .154 .410∗ – −.597∗∗ −.120 −.168 .414∗ .173 – .233 .429∗ −.106 −.005 – .154 .213 .408∗ – −.151 .088 – .399∗ – Note. CH_PA = language children speak to parents; PA_CH = language parents speak to children; INDP_SCH = child independent literacy practice related to schoolwork; INDP_NSCH = child independent literacy practice unrelated to schoolwork; SH_HW = parents’ help on children’s homework; SH_NSCH = shared reading unrelated to schoolwork; RADICAL = character structure knowledge; VOCAB = vocabulary breadth. ∗ p < .05 ∗∗ p < .01. 14 ZHANG AND KODA parent/sibling–child joint reading related to schoolwork and character structure knowledge (r = .213). Taken together, these data suggest that children who worked more on their Chinese schoolwork, either independently or with help from their parents/siblings, tended to have a higher level of CHL word knowledge. Finally, there was a significant, positive correlation between radical identification ability and vocabulary breadth (r = .399, p < .05). Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 DISCUSSION This study examined young CHL learners’ home literacy experience and its relationship with their HL word knowledge. To answer our first research question, we found that parents mostly used Chinese to talk to their children, while CHL learners preferred to use English or a mixture of both English and HL to talk to their parents. This finding corroborates those of previous studies. For example, Zhang (2008) found that young second-generation Chinese children often started with a good command of Chinese, but many lost their interest in keeping up with learning and using their HL as they progressed in their American schools. This shift in pattern of HL use should not be a surprise if we consider the status of English as the societal language and medium of instruction in mainstream schools and HL learners’ increasing competence to communicate in English, their second language, after schooling starts. Findings of the questionnaire survey in this study revealed a homework or schoolwork orientation in HL literacy practice in CHL learners’ homes. Most of the learners in the study reported frequent schoolwork-related independent reading practice (3–4 times a week or more); half of the parents also provided relatively frequent (1–2 times in a week or more) help on children’s HL homework. On the contrary, a very minor proportion of children were involved in frequent reading of materials unrelated to schoolwork, either independently or with their parents/siblings. The divergence between involvement in schoolwork-related and schoolwork-unrelated CHL reading may be related to the importance given to homework by immigrant Chinese parents (Li, 2006b); the low involvement in schoolwork-unrelated independent reading may also be due to the inadequate proficiency of the children at that particular stage of CHL learning (i.e., Grade 3). The study also found a pattern of HL literacy practice that has never been reported in previous studies on HL learners. We found that children’s independent reading of schoolwork-related and schoolwork-unrelated materials was significantly, negatively correlated. This seems to suggest that HL learners did the two types of reading at a relatively fixed frequency level. If they worked on their schoolwork more times in a week, they would decrease the amount of time for leisure reading. This choice sounds reasonable given that HL literacy only serves as an ancillary purpose for the learners; presumably, children would spend more of their time on English literacy practice, while constraining their allocation of time for independent reading in their HL. The impact of home literacy experience on HL literacy skills was partly confirmed too. Parents’ language use with children was found to be significantly correlated with HL vocabulary breadth, but not character structure knowledge. This seems to be understandable, given that parents’ oral-language input is an important source where children acquire lexical knowledge in their HL, while development of character-structure knowledge necessitates exposure to print rather than oral experience. In addition, we found significant positive correlations between children’s schoolwork-related reading practice and their HL word knowledge. However, there were no significant relations Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 CHL HOME LITERACY 15 between the two types of reading that were unrelated to schoolwork, independent and shared, and learners’ HL character-structure knowledge and vocabulary breadth. The first finding should be easily interpretable, if we consider the type of print input children are exposed to in their HL. Because CHL learners in this study learned to read largely through their experience in the weekend school, with minimal opportunity to be exposed to HL print in the community, schoolwork-related materials should have a clearly important function in the formation of their HL literacy competencies. In a study on CHL learners of similar background, Koda, Lu, and Zhang (2008) found that the properties of the characters in children’s Chinese textbooks highly determine their level of HL reading subskills. Thus, there is no wonder that in this study, children’s work on their homework assignments or reading of other schoolwork-related materials was closely connected with their CHL word knowledge. But how do we interpret the missing connection between schoolwork-unrelated reading and HL word knowledge? At first sight, this seems to contradict the findings of previous studies on monolingual children’s literacy acquisition. Many previous studies on home literacy environment and reading development support the idea that children’s independent storybook reading and shared reading with their parents play critical roles in the development of reading and its subskills (e.g., Anderson et al., 1988; Benett et al., 2002; Sénéchal et al., 1998). Tse’s (2001) case study of HL learners also seems to support the contribution of leisure reading in the development of HL literacy. Obviously, the findings of the current study did not suggest that schoolwork-unrelated reading is not important to HL word-knowledge development. The problem seems to lie in the skewed distribution of frequency of children’s reading that is unrelated to schoolwork. As shown earlier, most of our participants reported a very low level of either independent reading or shared reading regarding materials not related to their schoolwork (e.g., rarely or 1–2 times in a month). Based on this, we assume that there should be a threshold level of frequency of such reading practices that has to be passed for the connection between these practices and word knowledge to emerge. In a study on Spanish–English bilingual high school students, McQuillan (2006) found that the relationship between print exposure and access and English vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linear. By splitting the sample to quartiles, McQuillan found that variations in print exposure and access to books did not make a significant impact on vocabulary knowledge scores until the highest quartile. That is to say, there was little change in students’ vocabulary scores until they passed that threshold. Based on this explanation, it seems that young HL learners would have to go beyond a threshold level of schoolwork-unrelated reading practice, for example, 3–4 times in a week, for their HL literacy learning to be benefited. A minimum level, such as 1–2 times in a month, of practice would not lead to a clear beneficiary effect. This said, our study could not test this assumption statistically as McQuillan did, due to the small number of learners who read highly frequently materials that are unrelated to schoolwork, either independently or with their parents/older siblings. CONCLUSIONS This study examined young CHL learners’ home literacy experience and its impact on CHL word knowledge. Discrepancy was found between the learners’ and their parents’ home language use, and between levels of schoolwork-related and schoolwork-unrelated literacy practices. CHL Downloaded By: [Zhang, Dongbo] At: 23:05 9 May 2011 16 ZHANG AND KODA learners’ home literacy practice showed a clear schoolwork orientation, which was closely related to their HL word knowledge; however, reading practice of a more recreational nature remained at a very low level, and its relation with children’s CHL word knowledge was not straightforward. Due to the design of the study, some details about how HL literacy environment at home impacts HL literacy development could not be drawn. On the one hand, this study only used a questionnaire to collect the frequency of children’s involvement in HL reading. We had no information about the exact nature of the reading tasks children were involved in. In other words, we could not answer questions as to what children’s HL homework assignments look like, in what ways parents provide help on children’s homework, and whether shared reading is simply reading aloud jointly or it involves some direct teaching of language and literacy skills. On the other hand, some factors that may affect children’s CHL word knowledge were not touched upon in the questionnaire survey, such as time, as compared to frequency, of HL use and reading practice, availability of print resources (e.g., books), parents’ education levels, and the types of HL (i.e., Mandarin or a dialect of Chinese) used at home. These limitations make it difficult to develop a complete account of children’s home literacy environment and its relationship with HL literacy acquisition. In addition, the sample size of the present study is small, which limits the generalizability of the findings. To answer these questions and address the limitations of the current study, future research might consider involving a larger number of HL learners and using more fine-tuned elicitation items in questionnaires, or supplementing a questionnaire survey with interviews with learners and/or their parents. Despite these limitations, findings of the current study could have some implications for teachers and parents in bilingual children’s HL literacy development. While it is straightforward to suggest that parents should encourage children to read HL materials and spend more time reading together with them, the importance of collaboration between teachers and parents should not be ignored. The schoolwork-oriented literacy practice in our CHL learners’ homes potentially means that teachers can capitalize on this and refine homework assigned to learners to promote acquisition of HL reading skills. 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