Modeling the relationships of parents’ expectations, family’s SES, and home literacy environment with emergent literacy skills and word reading in Chinese

Abstract

Τhe purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of parents’ expectations, family’s socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (formal and informal literacy experiences and literacy resources at home) with emergent literacy skills (phonological awareness, vocabulary) and word reading in Chinese. One hundred and forty third-year kindergarten Chinese children (71 girls and 69 boys; mean age=70.54months) were assessed on nonverbal IQ, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading. Parents also filled out a questionnaire on their educational level and income, the frequency of engaging in different home literacy-related activities with their child, and their expectations about their child’s reading/school performance. Results of path analysis showed that formal literacy activities predicted phonological awareness and literacy resources at home predicted vocabulary. In addition, family’s SES was a significant predictor of literacy resources at home and parents’ expectations was a significant predictor of all home literacy aspects and of word reading. Results of multiple mediation analysis further showed that the effects of parents’ expectations on word reading were partly mediated by formal literacy experiences and literacy resources at home. In contrast, the effects of literacy resources at home on word reading were fully mediated by the effects of vocabulary on phonological awareness. Taken together, these findings suggest that the links between home literacy environment (including the factors that shape the quantity and quality of the home literacy experiences) and reading in Chinese are not as straightforward as those previously reported in alphabetic languages.