Parental Involvement and Reading-Related Activities of Struggling Readers of English as a Second Language

Abstract

The focus of the study is to explore the way the parents took part in their children’s English as a second language (henceforth ESL) learning at home. This qualitative study utilised interviews to garner information from seven participating parents of struggling readers of English as a second language in a Malaysian primary classroom. This paper intends to report the findings from the research question, namely: “How do the participating parents work with their children at home?” Two major themes emerged from the data: involvement; and challenges. In this paper, the partial results of one of the main themes discovered, that is involvement will be presented. This paper highlights reading-related activities that were carried out by the parents at home with their children. It is hoped from this study that educators could exploit the home reading activities of the struggling readers to inform teaching practices to effectively support those students in the ESL classroom.