Enhancing Children's Reading Ability and Vocabulary Growth

Enhancing Children's Reading Ability and Vocabulary Growth

through Dialogic Reading and Morphology Training

CHOW Wing-yin

A Thesis submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Philosophy \

in I

Psychology

© The Chinese University of Hong Kong

July 2005

The Chinese University of Hong Kong holds the copyright of the thesis. Any person(s)

intending to use a part or whole of the materials in the thesis in a proposed publication

must seek copyright release from the Dean of the Graduate School.

^ ^ 統系餘書岡 v A

~UNIVERSITY /c . ^XLIBRARY SYST[I^�yZ

Dialogic reading and morphology training i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest and most heartfelt

gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Catherine McBride-Chang. Not only did she

provide me with unswerving support and thoughtful guidance, her love for research

has always been my greatest motivation behind my academic pursuit. I owe my

deepest gratitude to her who has showed me kindness and caring. It is my greatest

honour to have Professor Catherine McBride-Chang to be my supervisor through my

undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

My sincere thanks also go to Professor Hsuan Chih Chen and Professor Him

Chueng, who not only provided me with insightful comments on my thesis but also

showed me great assistance. Their supports have led to scores of enhancement of this

thesis.

Special thanks go to Ms H. K. Ng, the headmistress of the Kau Yan School

(Kindergarten Session), and Ms K. L. Tsang，the headmistress of the Hong Kong Ling

Liang Church Kindergarten and the Ma On Shan Ling Liang Kindergarten. Without

their kind participation and help, this thesis would not have become a reality. I would

also like to thank all parents and children who took time and efforts in this study.

I owe my gratitude to my friends, Cecilia Cheuk, Celia Chow, Cyprus Lam,

Elaine Ng, Kitty Fung, Klaris Leung, Lucian Fan, Willy Yu and many others who

helped me with preparation of materials and data collection. My sincere thanks also

go to my dearest friends, Cammy Chiu, Kady Lau and Zoe Fu, who have always

provided me unfailing support. My heartfelt thanks go to Simpson Wong, who has

always been a cheerful partner sharing all the happiness and sadness with me, and

Dialogic reading and morphology training ii

showed me unswerving support and encouragement to my studies. Last but not least, I

owe my deepest gratitude to my family. They have showed me great patience, caring

and understanding, especially in the period which I was extremely busy with my work.

Their love is the treasure of my life.

Dialogic reading and morphology training iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Table of contents iii

Abstract (English) v

Abstract (Chinese) vi

Chapter One

Introduction 1

Emergent Literacy and Language Development

Situation in Hong Kong

Parent-child Reading

Interaction during Parent-child Reading

Dialogic Reading

Dialogic Reading and Linguistic Skills

Phonological Awareness and Chinese Acquisition

Morphological Awareness and Chinese Acquisition

Objectives, Design and Hypothesis of the Present Study

Chapter Two

Method 22

Participants

Measures

Procedure

Chapter Three

Results 35

Pretest Measures

Storybook Identification

Group Improvement

Follow-up Questionnaire

Responses to the Morphological Construction task

Dialogic reading and morphology training iv

Chapter Four

Discussion 49

Effectiveness of Dialogic Reading

Effectiveness of Dialogic Reading with Morphology Training

Effectiveness of Typical Reading

Significance of the Results from the Present Study

Limitations and Suggestions

Conclusion

References 62

Appendices 74

A. Children's questionnaire on reading

B. Storybook identification task

C. Demographic questionnaire

D. Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading condition

E. Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading with morphology condition

F. Titles of storybooks

G. Dialogic reading guideline

H. Dialogic reading bookmark

I. Morphology training guideline

J. Sample items of morphological construction training

K. Sample items of homophone training

Dialogic reading and morphology training v

Abstract

The present study investigated the effectiveness of the dialogic reading method, and a

combination of dialogic reading method and morphology training, on facilitating

children's language, literacy, phonological and morphological skills, and their interest

in reading. One hundred forty eight Hong Kong kindergarteners and their parents

participated in this study. The children were pretested on the Chinese tasks of

character recognition, receptive and productive vocabulary, morphological awareness,

syllabic awareness, and reading interest, and then assigned randomly to one of four

conditions, dialogic reading with morphology training, dialogic reading, typical

reading and control. After a 12-week intervention, the children were posttested.

Results indicated significant interaction effects for performance on character

recognition, receptive vocabulary, and reading interest. Findings demonstrated that the

dialogic reading with morphology training and the dialogic reading interventions

yielded greater gains in children's receptive vocabulary and reading interest. Children

in the dialogic reading with morphology training condition had significantly greater

improvement in character recognition ability, and showed a trend of greater gains in

morphological awareness measured by the morpheme identification task. These

results support causal relation between home literacy activities and children's

language and literacy acquisition, and highlight the importance of parent-child

interaction. A causal relation between morphological awareness and children's literacy

skill is also suggested.

Dialogic reading and morphology training vi

摘要

本研究探討對話式閱讀，和結合對話式閱讀及詞素訓練的親子閱讀方式，

對促進兒童語文、語音意識、詞素意識和閱讀興趣發展的有效性。本研究

的對象為一百四十八位就讀於幼稚園的香港兒童及其家長。首先，兒童

被安排進行讀字、詞囊、語音意識、詞素意識和閱讀興趣的前試。接著，

他們被隨機編入下列四個組別之其中一組：對話式閱讀及詞素訓練組’對

話式閱讀組，普通閱讀組和控制組。兒童在十二星期的親子閱讀後被安排

進行後試。測試結果指出在讀字、接受性詞棄和閱讀興趣的表現上存在

著有效的相互影響。結果顯示對話式閱讀及詞素訓練組和對話式閱讀組

在接受性詞彙能力和閱讀興趣方面有更大的提升 °對話式閱讀及詞素訓

練組在讀字能力上有顯著的進步，而在詞素辨認的表現傾向較佳於其他組

別。研究結果支持家中語文活動與兒童語文發展的因果關係，以及突顯

親子相互交流的重要性。除此以外，研究結果亦顯示詞素意識與語文發展

之間的因果關係。

Dialogic reading and morphology training 1

Chapter One : Introduction

Children's early literacy and language development have drawn a large

measure of attention from researchers (e.g., Snow, Bums, & Griffon, 1998;

Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Children acquire oral language very rapidly during the

preschool years, and learning to read is a key milestone of their development. The

importance of understanding and facilitating children's literacy and language

development has been underscored by Snow and colleagues (1998), who noted that

literacy and language development of children was interwoven and continuous with

development that would lead to expertise in other spheres of life. Strong continuity

has been demonstrated between literacy and language skills of children entering

school and their later academic performance (Zevenbergen & Whitehurst，2003), and

a positive correlation and longitudinal continuity has been shown between individual

differences in emergent literacy and later differences in reading (Whitehurst,

Zevenbergen, Crone, Schultz, Velting, & Fischel，1999). The present study was

conducted to investigate effective methods for enhancing the quality of home literacy

activities for Hong Kong Chinese children's literacy and language growth.

Emergent literacy and language development

Concepts of emergent literacy and language have been revised in recent

decades to provide a better understanding of children's development of emergent

literacy and language skills. Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write

(McBride-Chang, 2004) and emergent literacy refers to the developmental precursors

to conventional forms of reading and writing in the early years of literacy

development (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Researchers have proposed several

components underlying emergent literacy, including knowledge about print, context


strategies for word reading, concepts of oral language, and metalinguistic skills (e.g.,

Mason & Stewart, 1990; Whitehurst & Lonigon, 1998). These definitions of

emergent literacy cover a wide range of knowledge and concepts, and fuse aspects of

oral language, metalinguistic, and reading-related skills. However, converging

evidence and empirical results have supported emergent literacy as a separate

construct from oral language and metalinguistic skills, though they are highly related

(Senechal, LeFevre, Smith-Chant, & Colton，2001). Snow (1983) pointed out that all

children have at least acquired a certain level of oral language before formal

schooling, but they might not acquire literacy skills before formal schooling. Oral

language skills develop naturally, while literacy skills require explicit teaching.

Lonigan, Burgess, and Antony (2000) found that models with oral language,

phonological awareness, and print knowledge considered as separate constructs,

rather than a single construct, best explained young children's performance.

Measures of oral language, writing, and metalinguistic skills were also found to be

loaded on different factors (Whitehurst, Epstein, Angell, Payne, Crone, & Fischel，

1994). Owing to the specific conceptualization on emergent literacy, oral language

and metalinguistic skills, Senechal and colleagues (2001) refined the theoretical

models of emergent literacy and provided a comprehensive framework of

components underlying emergent literacy, language, and metalinguistic skills.

According to the definitions proposed by Senechal and colleagues (2001),

emergent literacy includes conceptual and procedural knowledge of writing and

reading. Conceptual knowledge refers to children's knowledge of the functions of

print and the acts of reading and writing, their perception of learning to read, and

emergent reading in context, whereas procedural knowledge includes children's


knowledge about mechanics of reading and writing, such as letter and letter-sound

knowledge, and preconventional spelling and word reading skills. In contrast, oral

language involves skills and knowledge about the sounds of the language and how

language conveys meaning (Snow et al.,1998). Senechal and colleagues (2001)

proposed that the construct of language is composed of narrative knowledge,

vocabulary, and listening comprehension skills, whereas phonological and syntactic

awareness represent the metalinguistic skills construct.

In the present study, emergent literacy and oral language were conceptualized

as different constructs which were closely related to each other. Vocabulary skills,

both receptive and productive, were assessed as a proxy for oral language, whereas

character recognition was assessed as a proxy for emergent literacy in this study.

Situation in Hong Kong

Most Hong Kong children start their formal schooling at a very young age.

Almost every child aged between three to six years enters either a kindergarten or a

child care centre (Opper, 1996), and on entering the nursery class of kindergarten at

age three, children begin to leam to read and write Chinese characters (Fu, 1987; Li

& Rao，2000). The mainstream approach to early Chinese reading instruction relies

heavily on rote memorization, and children are encouraged to leam characters as

wholistic units (Cheung & Ng，2003). Also, children are required to copy new

characters for several times to ensure that they can recognize and reproduce them

(Chan & Wang, 2003). Children in the first grade are expected to have leamt

approximately 460 characters, and they are expected to know about 2080 characters

by grade four (Hong Kong Department of Education, 1990).

The Chinese script is particularly difficult to leam because in Chinese, each


character simultaneously represents a morpheme and a syllable, and learning to read

and write in Chinese means mastery of thousands of individual characters (Butcher,

1995). In Mandarin, there are approximately 7000 characters used regularly (Li,

Anderson, Nagy, & Zhang, 2002).

For Hong Kong children, learning to read Chinese is further complicated by

the unique feature of the linguistic reality in the region that Cantonese pronunciation

of characters is used when they are read aloud, but Modem Standard Chinese, the

lexical and syntactic structures of which are different from Cantonese grammar, is

used when they are read or written (Cheung & Ng，2003; Fu, 1987). Hong Kong

children have to handle written Chinese, which does not directly correspond to their

spoken Cantonese. Owing to the complexities of the Chinese script, parental input

may be particularly important to learning to read of children, and this typically

occurs in the context of shared reading in Chinese families (Li & Rao, 2000).

Parents in Hong Kong generally have positive attitudes towards early literacy

instruction and home literacy activities. Li and Rao (2000) found that 58 % of the

parents believed that preschool was the appropriate time to start literacy teaching,

and 73% of the parents taught their children to read Chinese characters at home. The

majority of Hong Kong parents (82.5%) believed that parent-child reading was

useful to develop their child's Chinese literacy skills (Li & Rao，2000). However,

parent-child reading habits tend to be irregular. Many parents (75%) did not set a

definite time for reading Chinese stories to their children (Li & Rao, 2000).

Therefore, programs which provide guidance for Hong Kong parents to teach literacy

at home and read regularly and effectively with their children are needed.

Parent-child reading


Parent-child reading is an ideal context for children's language and literacy

development as it provides a natural context for parents to assist their children in

forming concepts about books, print and reading (Clay, 1979)，and it offers both

social and contextual support for language and literacy development which matches

children's needs, based on Vygotsky's (1978) "zone of proximal development".

Parent-child reading provides opportunities for children to leam new vocabulary

words that they may not encounter in daily life and conversation, and to acquire

knowledge on conventions of print and syntactic structure of language (Wasik &

Bond, 2001). Parents generally talk in more complex ways during shared book

reading than in free-play settings (Fletcher & Reese, 2005). For example, parents'

mean length of utterance, levels of abstraction, and responsiveness to child utterances

and are higher in shared book reading context compared to other contexts such as

free-play and meal times (e.g., Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991; Sorsby & Martlew’ 1991).

The impacts of parent-child reading experience on children's language and

literacy development have been well documented in psychological and educational

research. Correlational studies have shown that frequency of parent-child reading is

positively associated with children's language and literacy abilities (e.g., Payne,

Whitehurst, & Angell, 1994). Experimental research studies have found that

parent-child reading experiences enhance children's growth in print awareness (e.g.,

Justice & Ezell，2000), letter awareness (e.g., Mason, Kerr, Sinha, & McCormick,

1990)，vocabulary (e.g., Elley, 1989; Whitehurst, Falco, Lonigan, Fischel, DeBaryshe,

Valdez-Menchaca, & Caulfield, 1988), literacy skills (e.g., Chow & McBride-Chang，

2003)，oral language complexity (e.g., Crain-Thoreson & Dale, 1999), and narrative

skills (e.g., Harkins, Koch, & Michel，1994). In addition, longitudinal studies have


revealed that early parent-child reading is related to later language and literacy skills

(e.g., Bus, van Ijzendoom, & Pellegrini, 1995; Wells, 1985; Wood, 2002).

The process of parent-child reading consists of several components, including

storybook quality, parents' skills and children's responses, and these components

determine the outputs of parent-child reading (Fletcher & Reese，2005). Researchers

are trying to understand the linkage of these components with children's language

and literacy development. According to Kerr and Mason (1994), storybooks provide

a focal point for discussion and teaching, during shared book reading. Regarding

vocabulary development, storybooks contain vivid pictures and story lines that

highlight new words, making those new words memorable and meaningful. When

storybooks are read to them, children can leam words that are not in their oral

vocabulary base. Though vocabulary acquisition happens naturally simply from

hearing stories repeatedly, learning is enhanced when children are questioned and

asked to comment on the words and events depicted with scaffolding of children's

abilities through literacy experiences. By linking words with children's knowledge,

children's vocabulary knowledge increases substantially (Kerr & Mason，1994).

Children are scaffolded to leam new vocabulary words by parents' clarification of

referents with the help of pictures through shared book reading (Fletcher & Reese，

2005).

Children develop the sense that print carries meaning and appears in a

word-by-word manner through parent-child reading experience (Clay, 1991). During

parent-child reading, children's attention is drawn to concepts about print, including

directionality of print, words and sentences. Regarding word recognition, when

parents point to words as they read to children, children are aided to focus on specific


words, connect the words with meaning, and their attention to print and the ways that

the words are pronounced is drawn (Kerr & Mason, 1994). In line with vocabulary

learning, reading and re-reading stories to children can help them to attend to word

information, and learning is promoted if children actively participate in reading (Kerr

& Mason, 1994). However, in contrast to vocabulary learning, word recognition

acquisition requires parents' explicit teaching.

Interaction during parent-child reading

Past research has highlighted the importance of interaction during

parent-child reading, and suggested that parents' specific behaviors and practices in

parent-child reading, such as questioning, extending information, and praising,

facilitate children's language skills (Flood, 1977; Ninio & Bruner，1978; Roser &

Martinez, 1985; Zevenbergen & Whitehurst, 2003). Children do not leam simply

from listening to their parents reading a text aloud (Bus, 2003), and passive exposure

to words supports learning less effectively than children's active usage of words

(Nagy & Scott, 2000). Children are provided with opportunities to use words actively

through parent-child interactive conversations (De Temple & Snow, 2003), and this

active participation is always better than straight reading of the text (Senechal,

Thomas, & Monker，1995). Research evidence has indicated that children who have

the opportunities to be active participants in the reading experience during interactive

reading show greater language gains than those who are just read directly by adults

(Whitehurst et al, 1988; Whitehurst, Arnold, Epstein, Angell, Smith, & Fischel,

1994). Therefore, rather than simply reading the text by parents, it seems especially

important to encourage children's involvement and to engage their active attention

(Adams, 1990).


Associations between amount of preschool exposure to books, and interest in

reading have been demonstrated (Lonigan, 1994; Lyytinen, Laakso, & Poikkeus，

1998; Scarborough & Dobrich，1994). Recent research has shown that verbal and

affective interaction during parent-child reading might be especially important in

contributing to children's interest in reading (Baker, Mackler, Sonnenschein, &

Serpen, 2001). Through pleasurable interaction during parent-child reading, positive

views about reading and motivation for reading can be promoted (Baker, Scher, &

Mackler, 1997). In a study examining quality parent-child reading and children's

interest in reading, Oritz, Stowe, and Arnold (2001) found that children whose

parents had been trained to use strategies such as following the child's lead, getting

the child actively involved, making reading fun, using positive feedback, and

selecting stories that would interest the child, demonstrated increased interest in

shared book reading, relative to children whose parents did not participate in the

reading intervention.

The importance of interest in reading should be noted because a child's

interest in reading is related to literacy-relevant experience as well as acquisition of

language and literacy skills (Dale, Crain-Thoreson, & Robinson, 1995; Scarborough,

Dobrich, & Hager，1991). Lyytinen, Laakso, and Poikkeus (1998) found that children

who had greater interest in reading engaged parent-child reading more frequently,

and had better vocabulary skills, compared with children with low interest in books.

Also, in another research study on preschool literacy experiences and later reading

achievement, interest in and motivation for reading at preschool was associated with

reading abilities at the second grade (Scarborough, Dobrich, & Hager, 1991).

Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) pointed out that children who had greater interest in


reading might engage in literacy related activities more frequently, which in-tum

enhanced their literacy and language abilities.

Despite the importance of children's interest in reading, there has been little

empirical research on how parent-child reading, including the way in which parents

read to their children, might enhance children's interest in reading. Oritz et al. (2001)

was among the very few that studied parental influence on children's interest in

shared book reading. However, they included an intervention and a control condition

only, and the contributions of shared book reading itself and parental behaviors

during reading were unclear. Therefore, the impacts of shared reading and

parent-child interaction on children's interest in reading were examined in the present

study. Four groups were included to provide a clearer picture of the contributions of

shared reading and parent-child interaction to children's interest in reading.

Dialogic reading

A specific technique of parent-child reading developed by Whitehurst and

colleagues called dialogic reading involves high levels of interaction between parents

and children. "[Dialogic reading technique] is based on the theory that practice in

using language, feedback regarding language, and appropriately scaffolded

adult-child interactions in the context of picture book reading all facilitate young

children's language development." (Zevenbergen & Whitehurst, 2003, p. 178).

Dialogic reading alters roles during picture book reading so that the child gradually

becomes the storyteller and the parent becomes an active listener, prompting the

child with questions, expanding the child's verbalizations, linking the text to the

child's experience, and praising the child's efforts (Rogoff, 1990; Valdez-Menchaca

& Whitehurst，1992). Following the principle of proximal development (Vygotsky,


1978)，children are supported to say more than they naturally do and this scaffolding

contributes to a more rapid growth of children's language skills than their natural

development of language skills.

Dialogic reading has been found to have a positive impact on children's

language skills in alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages, especially vocabulary,

through a series of experimental studies conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of

dialogic reading interventions for children from upper-, middle- and

lower-socioeconomic status groups (e.g., Chow & McBride-Chang’ 2003; Hargrave

& S6n6chal，2000; Huebner, 2000; Lim, 1999; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992;

Whitehurst & Lonigan，1998; Whitehurst et al.,1988; Whitehurst, Arnold et al.，1994).

For example, Whitehurst et al. (1988) reported a 6-month gain in expressive

vocabulary and an 8.5-month gain in expressive language fluency of upper-and

middle-socioeconomic status 2-year-olds in the United States through a 4-week

dialogic reading program at home, and these gains were maintained at a 9-month

follow-up assessment. Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst (1992) found children in the

dialogic reading condition were an average of 7.3 months ahead in terms of language

age on the Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWEVT), 8.2 months

ahead on the verbal expressive subscale of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic

Abilities (ITPA-VE), and 3.3 months ahead on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

(PPVT) compared with the children in the control condition in Mexico. Also,

Hargrave and Senechal (2000) found that children in the dialogic reading condition

had significantly greater gains in vocabulary introduced in the books and expressive

vocabulary assessed by standardized test, compared to children in the regular book

reading condition. Dialogic reading has also been demonstrated to be effective in


enhancing Chinese receptive vocabulary development of hearing-impaired children

in Hong Kong (Fung, Chow, & McBride-Chang，2005) and improving children's

Korean oral productive and receptive skills in Korea (Lim, 1999).

Though findings give strong evidence that dialogic reading is an effective

technique for enhancing the growth of children's language skills, there have been

fewer studies investigating the association between dialogic reading and children's

literacy development. Chow and McBride-Chang (2003) provided evidence on the

effectiveness of dialogic reading in facilitating Chinese literacy development of

5-year-olds in Hong Kong through an 8-week dialogic reading program. Whitehurst,

Epstein et al. (1994) revealed that the dialogic reading intervention had a significant

effect on the Writing factor (e.g. printing from right to left, and writing his or her

own name) and Print Concepts factor (e.g. identifying components of writing, and

distinguishing between words, pictures, and numbers). Whitehurst et al. (1999)

replicated the Head Start intervention study described in Whitehurst, Epstein et al.

(1994), and positive effects on emergent literacy skills were indicated and maintained

through the end of kindergarten. In contrast to language skills, the findings on

literacy skills are not clear. In the studies conducted by Whitehurst, Epstein et al.

(1994) and Whitehurst et al. (1999), the intervention condition was a combination of

a dialogic reading program conducted both at home and in school, and a

classroom-based sound and letter awareness program called Sound Foundations.

Therefore, any significant results could not be attributed only to the dialogic reading

program.

Dialogic reading and linguistic skills

Though Whitehurst, Epstein et al. (1994) and Whitehurst et al. (1999) did not


demonstrate the relative contributions of dialogic reading and the sound and letter

awareness program, they pioneered an investigation of the effectiveness of a

combination of dialogic reading and a linguistic training program on children's

literacy, language, and linguistic awareness growth. Their studies supported the

possibility of combining dialogic reading program with other linguistic training

program to enhance children's language and literacy growth, and their findings imply

that children could benefit even more from dialogic reading program if elements of

linguistic instruction are added. Whitehurst, Epstein et al. (1994) and Whitehurst et al.

(1999) were also among the very few that examined children's improvement on

linguistic skills. However, their results revealed no significant differences on the

Linguistic Awareness factor (e.g., identifying sounds and letters, identifying sounds

as same or different, segmenting sentences into words, and segmenting words into

syllables) between the intervention and control groups.

The present study was conducted to investigate the useftilness of dialogic

reading, and a combination of dialogic reading and linguistic training program in

facilitating children's development of Chinese language, literacy and linguistic skills,

and interest in reading among Hong Kong Chinese families as an extension of Chow

and McBride-Chang (2003)，Whitehurst, Epstein et al. (1994) and Whitehurst et al.

(1999).

Phonological awareness and Chinese acquisition

Reading research studies in recent decades have demonstrated the relations

among various cognitive factors and reading abilities. Phonological awareness has

been demonstrated to be one of the most important factors strongly related to

children's reading abilities.


Phonological awareness is the awareness of and access to the sound system of

one's language, and it consists of different levels of representation, such as syllable,

onset-rime and phoneme (Adams, 1990). Strong evidence has shown the importance

of phonological awareness in reading alphabetical scripts (e.g., Bradley & Bryant，

1985; Byrne & FieWing-Bamsley, 1990; Cunningham, 1990; Siok & Fletcher, 2001;

Torgesen, Morgan, & Davis, 1992), and phonological awareness is regarded as the

most importance linguistic factor in learning to read alphabetical scripts (Adam,

1990). The importance of phonological awareness in learning to read Chinese has

been shown by converging findings (e.g., Chow, McBride-Chang, & Burgess，2005;

Ho & Bryant, 1997; Huang & Hanley，1997). Research has demonstrated the

importance of syllabic awareness (e.g., McBride-Chang & Ho，2000) and onset-rime

awareness (e.g., Siok & Fletcher，2001) to Chinese character recognition. However,

phonemic awareness is considered to be relatively less important in learning to read

Chinese as Chinese characters map onto syllables instead of phonemes.

In recent times, phonological awareness has been found to be at least partly

the by-product of learning to read, and reciprocal relations between phonological

awareness and reading abilities have been demonstrated (e.g., Burgess & Lonigan,

1998; Castles & Coltheart，2004; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes，1987; Wagner,

Torgesen, & Rashotte，1994). In the study conducted by Chow and colleagues (2005),

syllabic awareness uniquely predicted concurrent and subsequent Chinese character

recognition after controlling for age, vocabulary and visual skills, and Chinese

character recognition contributed to subsequent syllabic awareness after controlling

for age, vocabulary, visual skills and concurrent syllabic awareness among Hong

Kong kindergarteners. This reciprocal relationship indicates that syllabic awareness


skills and reading development proceeds hand in hand. In Chinese, the basic

phonological unit is the syllable and every character represents a single syllable.

Thus, for beginning readers, syllabic awareness is particularly important for reading

acquisition in Chinese, while at the same time experience with print may sensitize

children to syllable-level units, just as learning to read English sensitizes children to

phoneme-level units. Owing to the reciprocal relations between phonological

awareness and reading abilities, associations between parent-child reading and

phonological awareness might be expected. Hoffman (1997) noted that phonological

development could be enhanced as a part of story narration when the story was

repeated enough so that the children could produce the content words and phrase

structures, reflecting the positive impacts of shared book reading on the development

of phonological awareness. The effects of shared book reading on syllabic awareness

in Chinese may be even greater owing to the primacy of the syllable in Chinese

spoken and written language. In Chinese, every single word in spoken and written

forms represents a syllable. Therefore, the experience in listening, speaking and

reading Chinese during parent-child reading can enhance children's sensitivity to

syllable-level units in Chinese. Therefore, the impacts of parent-child reading on

Chinese syllabic awareness development were examined in the present study.

Morphological awareness and Chinese acquisition

Morphological awareness, which refers to the awareness of and the ability to

manipulate the meaning structure of language, is a relatively new cognitive factor

studied by researchers in relation to reading (Carlisle, 1995). Morphological

awareness in Chinese consists of different facets, including morpheme awareness,

homograph awareness and radical awareness (Li et al., 2002). Morphological


awareness is important to learning to read Chinese, and the role of morphological

awareness in reading Chinese may be analogous to the role of phonemic awareness

in reading English (Nagy and Anderson, 1999). Morphological awareness is believed

to be particularly important for learning Chinese for three reasons.

First, Chinese is an analytic language with a one-to-one correspondence

between syllables and morphemes. Each Chinese character simultaneously represents

a morpheme and a syllable, and there are no grapheme-phoneme correspondence

rules in reading the script. As Chinese characters represent morphemes more directly

while phonemes less directly and systematically than do the graphemic units of other

languages, morphological awareness might be a better predictor of Chinese reading

ability than phonemic awareness (Packard, 2002). Owing to the morphosyllabic

characteristic of the Chinese language and the semantic transparency of the words,

more complicated words can be built and compounded from simple morphemes. For

example, the words 電視 ( d 滅 si6; television) can be compounded by morphemes

電 ( d i n 6 ; electric") and 視 Cs紙• v/ s/c?"), and the words 電腦� d i n 6 nou5; computer)

can be compounded by morphemes 電 ( d m 6 ; electric) and 腦 ( j t o u 5 ; brain).

Morphology provides useful aids for supporting the acquisition of polymorphemic

vocabularies and the retention of these vocabularies (Sandra, 1994)，and meaning of

words can be derived through morphological analysis (Ku & Anderson, 2003).

Therefore, it is believed that children may make use of this transparency to leam new

vocabularies and words in Chinese.

Second, there are a large number of homophones in Chinese. In Mandarin,

there are approximately 7000 characters used regularly and the number of spoken

syllables are around 1200 (Li et a l , 2002). As there are much more characters than


the syllables used, in average of more than five characters per syllable, abilities to

distinguish characters with identical pronunciation but different written forms is

important. Thus, clarifying meaning differences across homophones is a major task

in early Chinese character acquisition, making morphological awareness particularly

important in learning to read Chinese.

Third, the majority (over 80%) of Chinese characters are phonograms

(Hoosain, 1991). Phonograms contain semantic radicals and phonetic radicals which

provide cues to the meaning of the characters and cues to the pronunciation of

characters respectively. Readers can use the cues given by the semantic radicals to

the meanings of characters. For example, the radical 女 ( female) provides cues to

the meaning of the characters 媽（mother)，妹（sister), and 姨（aunt) that these

characters are related to female. So, radical awareness is important in Chinese

reading development (Chen & Yuen，1991，Shu & Anderson，1997).

A number of correlation and experimental studies have reported associations

of morphological awareness with vocabulary and reading abilities in Chinese. Ku

and Anderson (2003) demonstrated that morphological awareness was strongly

related to Chinese reading ability (r = .63 to .73) and vocabulary knowledge (r 二 .51

to .60) among Taiwanese students in second, fourth, and sixth grades. They found

that more proficient readers performed better in morphological awareness tasks,

including recognizing morphological relationships between words, and

discriminating word parts having the same or different meanings, than the less

proficient readers (Ku & Anderson, 2003). Also, McBride-Chang, Shu, Zhou, Wat

and Wagner (2003) found that morphological awareness uniquely predicted Chinese

character recognition for Hong Kong kindergarteners and second graders, even


statistically controlling for other abilities previously demonstrated to predict reading,

such as phonological awareness, speeded naming, and speed of processing. In a

recent study conducted by McBride-Chang, Cheung, Chow, Chow, and Choi (under

review), measures of morphological awareness uniquely explained 13% of the

variance in Chinese vocabulary knowledge after controlling for age, IQ, character

recognition ability, and phonological awareness skills.

Owing to the associations of morphological awareness with reading and

vocabulary knowledge in Chinese, explicit instruction of morphological awareness

might be useful in promoting children's literacy and language acquisition

(McBride-Chang, 2004). Growing evidence has supported the effectiveness of

morphology training in facilitating children's Chinese acquisition. Fu and Huang

(2000) conducted a study on the effects of morphology training on Chinese character

recognition ability in Taiwan second-grade lower achievers. They found a significant

relationship between morphological awareness and character recognition ability, and

after a 4-week training, they found significant main effects of morphology training

on morphological and phonological awareness compared with the control group (Fu

& Huang, 2000). Though inter-group comparisons for character recognition posttest

scores were not significant, intra-group improvement on the character recognition

scores in the morphology training group but not in the control group suggested that

morphology training could help children to raise their character recognition ability

(Fu & Huang, 2000). Besides, Nagy, Kwo-Kealoha, Wu, Li, Anderson, and Chen

(2002) tested the effects of morphology training as a part of a one-year instructional

intervention on children's morphological awareness and literacy abilities in first and

forth graders in Beijing. The morphological awareness instruction was found to be


effective in improving children's performance on tasks directly related to

morphological awareness, and on reading or writing tasks which emphasized

character-level knowledge, compared with the controls, at both grade levels. This

training generally focused on radical teaching and administered to primary students,

and the instruction was class-based.

The present study

Based on the research evidence on the possibility of combining dialogic

reading and linguistic program, the importance of morphological awareness in

literacy and language development, and the effectiveness of morphology training on

Chinese acquisition, the present study added a morphology training component to the

dialogic reading method. It was expected that children would benefit even more from

the combination of dialogic reading program and morphology training.

Unlike previous combination of dialogic reading and training program, I

utilized the materials and technique used in dialogic reading to teach morphology.

Storybooks provide good bases and focal points for discussion, and the dialogic

reading technique provides excellent interactive contexts for parents to help children

to leam language and literacy. It was believed that morphology could be efficiently

taught through interactive parent-child conversations though dialogic reading, with

contents in storybooks as the bases. Therefore, morphology training could be well

incorporated with dialogic reading in practice and this combination could enhance

children's language and literacy development. This was a new extension of past

dialogic reading and morphology training studies. In contrast to previous training

studies on morphology training, which focused on radical teaching, morphological

construction and homophone training, were included in this study.


Morphological construction training focused on sensitizing children's

awareness to the morphosyllabic property of Chinese. By learning that Chinese

characters map onto morphemes and syllables, and that different meanings can be

created from simple morphemes, children can apply those techniques to form words

when they encounter new concepts and organize words they already know, which

supports the expansion of their vocabulary base. With more morphemes learned and

the compounding techniques practiced, their awareness in morphological

construction increases in turn. Homophone teaching emphasized distinctions among

words pronounced identically that have different meaning and written forms. Owing

to the large number of homophones in Chinese, teaching homophones explicitly may

be particularly useful in learning to read Chinese because the abilities to distinguish

the syllables are important for the children to map them onto Chinese characters. As

morphological construction teaching may be particularly useful in enhancing

children's vocabulary development while homophone teaching may be especially

useful in facilitating children's literacy development, both of them were included in

the present study as a method to enhance children's language and literacy growth.

Previous studies on the combination of dialogic reading and a linguistic

program included an intervention group and a control group only (e.g., Whitehurst,

Epstein et al., 1994 Whitehurst et al., 1999). However, the present study included

four groups (dialogic reading with morphology training, dialogic reading, typical

reading and control) so that the effects of the combination condition (dialogic reading

and morphology training), and the dialogic reading condition could be demonstrated.

In the present study, I was interested in investigating the effectiveness of

dialogic reading on children's oral language, literacy, and morphological and


phonological awareness development, and the effects of a combination of dialogic

reading and morphology training on these skills. Also, children's interest in reading

was examined. Because past studies found that typical parent-child reading was

related to children's oral language and literacy development, it was expected that the

typical parent-child reading condition would enhance vocabulary and character

recognition abilities. Also, because Chinese is morphosyllablic, children's syllabic

awareness and morphological awareness might improve with their experience in

using and reading Chinese during parent-child reading. Based on past dialogic

reading research and the importance of interaction in parent-child reading,

vocabulary and character recognition skills were expected to be enhanced. Children's

active participation and interaction with parents during dialogic reading provides

more opportunities for them to use and read Chinese, and thus facilitating their

syllabic and morphological awareness. Also, positive parent-child interaction could

increase children's interest in reading. Therefore, it was expected that children in the

dialogic reading condition would have greater gains in vocabulary, character

recogntion, syllabic and morphological awareness, and interest in reading, than

children in the typical reading and control conditions. Finally, dialogic reading with

morphology training could foster children's vocabulary, character recognition,

syllabic awareness and morphological awareness as dialogic reading did. However,

dialogic reading with morphology training was hypothesized to have stronger effects

on children's morphological awareness as it was explicitly taught during reading, and

this might in-tum promote children's vocabulary and literacy. Owing to the

morphosyllabic property of Chinese, drawing children's attention to the morpheme

might also help their awareness of the syllable. Based on past findings on the effects


of morphology training on phonological skills (Fu & Huang, 2000), the combination

of dialogic reading and morphology training was expected to foster children's

syllabic awareness.

To summarize, the hypothesis was that children in the condition of dialogic

reading with morphology training would have greater gains in scores of the

vocabulary, character recognition and syllabic and morphological awareness

measures, while scores on reading interest would not differ, compared to children in

the dialogic reading condition. Children in the dialogic reading condition would have

larger gains on scores of the vocabulaiy, character recognition, syllabic and

morphological awareness, and reading interest than children in the typical reading

condition. Compared to children in the control condition, children in the typical

reading condition were expected to have larger improvement in the performance on

the vocabulary and character recognition，and syllabic and morphological awareness

measures.


Chapter Two : Method

Participants

One hundred and forty eight children of normal intelligence attending third

year kindergarten in Hong Kong were included. Children ranged in age from 57 to 71

months with a mean age of 63.8 months. I randomly selected a list of kindergartens

for normal children and contacted the principals accordingly. Three kindergartens

participated and informed consent was given to the parents. Parents of those

participated children were Cantonese-speaking and had at least a primary educational

level were included in this study.

Measures

Character Recognition. Two Chinese character recognition tasks, including a

character recognition list and items adapted from the Hong Kong Test of Specific

Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing (HKT-SpLD) (Ho, Chan, Tsang & Lee,

2000), were combined and administered at both pretesting and posttesting. The

character recognition list has been successfully administered among Hong Kong

children (e.g., Ho & Bryant, 1997). It consisted of twenty-seven single Chinese

characters and thirty-four two-character words, ranked by increasing difficulty，and

the children were required to read each character aloud. The task was stopped when

the child failed to read ten consecutive items. Children were given the items adapted

from the HKT-SpLD if they progressed beyond the 61-item character recognition list.

Items adapted from the HKT-SpLD consisted of one-hundred-fifty two-character

words, ranked by increasing difficulty. Children were required to read each character

aloud and the task was stopped when the child failed to read fifteen consecutive

items. The maximum score of the combined task was two hundred eleven, and its


Cronbach's a was .98.

Vocabulary. Two vocabulary tasks were used to test children's receptive and

productive vocabulary knowledge at both pretesting and posttesting.

The Cantonese receptive vocabulary test consisted of thirty items from the

Hong Kong Cantonese Receptive Vocabulary Test (Cheung, Lee & Lee，1997) and

thirty additional items translated and adapted form the Peabody Picture Vocabulary

Test - Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997). The Hong Kong Cantonese

Receptive Vocabulary Test (Cheung, Lee & Lee, 1997) is a test of Cantonese

receptive vocabulary modeled on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and

developed for Cantonese-speaking children of two to six years old in Hong Kong.

The test consisted of three training items and sixty-five testing items. For each item,

the experimenter read out the target item and the child was required to select it from

the four pictures shown. Every item had one target character accompanied by a

phonological distracter, a semantic distracter, and an unrelated distracter. A ceiling

effect was found in the data analysis and thirty items yielded over 95% correct

responses among the children. To make the test more challenging and to save test

administration time during posttesting, the items that yielded over 95% correct

response were deleted and thirty items were translated and adapted from the

PPVT-III. Chinese translation of PPVT-III items have been successfully used among

Hong Kong children in past studies (Chow & McBride-Chang，2003; Fung et al.,

2005). The maximum score of the combined task was sixty, and its Cronbach's a

was .75.

The Cantonese vocabulary production test was modelled on the

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale vocabulary subtest (Thomdike, Hagen, & Sattler，


1986) and adapted for Cantonese-speaking children. Forty-six Chinese words

popularly used in primary school textbooks in Hong Kong were selected (Zhuang,

2000). The testing procedure and marking scheme of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence

Scale vocabulary subtest (Thomdike, Hagen, & Sattler，1986)，which had been

translated and adapted for Hong Kong children, was used. Children were asked

orally to explain concepts and objects of increasing conceptual difficulty. Each

answer was graded as zero, one, or two marks according to its accuracy and

completeness, and the test was stopped when the child obtains a zero score in five

consecutive items. This test has been successfully administered to Hong Kong

kindergarteners (McBride-Chang, Tardif, Shu, Fletcher, Stokes, Wong, Leung, under

review). The maximum score of this test was ninety two, and its Cronbach's a

was .81.

Phonological awareness. The syllable deletion task was administered to test

children's syllabic awareness in both pretesting and posttesting. The syllable deletion

task consisted of sixteen three-syllable phrases, half of which were real words and

phrases and half of which were nonsense syllables that conformed to the

phonological constraints of Cantonese. There were three trial items for real words

and phrases, and two trial items for nonsense word syllables. The items were orally

presented by the experimenter and the children were required to take away one

syllable from the three-syllable phrases. Two items required deletion of the first

syllables, two items required deletion of the last syllables and four items required

deletion of the middle syllables, in both real word and nonsense syllable items. For

example, in one of the real word items, the phrase 乡工綠燈{hung4 luk6 dangl)

without 綠 { l u k 6 ) would be 紅燈{hung4 dangl). In one of the non-sense word


items, the phrase nyu2 soel daam5 without nyu2 would be soel daamS. A similar

task has been used successfully in past research to demonstrate syllable awareness

among Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2003;

McBride-Chang, Bialystok, Chong & Li，2004). The maximum score of this task was

sixteen, and its Cronbach's a was .85.

Morphological awareness. Three tasks of morphological awareness in the

absence of print were administered at both prestesting and posttesting. They were the

morpheme identification task, the receptive morphological awareness task and the

morphological construction task.

The morpheme identification task consisted of four trial items and fourteen

test items. For each item, four pictures were presented to the children simultaneously

and each of the four pictures was labeled orally by the experimenter. Children were

then given a two-syllable word containing the target morpheme and asked to select

the picture which corresponded to the target morpheme. Every item had one target

morpheme accompanied by three distracter, two of which contained a homophone of

the target morpheme and one of which was a control item. The control item was in

the same semantic category of the two-syllable word given and did not contain the

target morpheme or its homophones in it. For example, in one test item, four pictures

showing an envelope {it M seon3 fungi), a petrol station (��由站 jau4 zaam6), a post

box (郵筒 jau4 tung2), and swimming (游水 jau4 seoil) were presented. Children

were asked to select from the four pictures the one that corresponded to the target

morpheme M (Jau4) of a stamp 票 jau4 piu3) and the target picture would be a

post box (郵筒 jau4 tungl). The maximum score of this task was fourteen, and its

Cronbach's a was .50.


The receptive morphological awareness task consisted of sixteen items. For

each item, four pictures were presented to the children simultaneously and the

experimenter read out the target item which represented a new concept. Children

were then asked to select the picture which corresponded to the meaning of the target

item. Every item had one target item accompanied by three distracter, two of which

contained a morpheme appeared in the target item and one of which was a control

item. For example, in one item of this task, the target item was a foot watch (腳錄

goek3 biul) which represented a new concept of the watch worn on the foot. Four

picture showing a foot watch (腳錶 goekS biul), a hand watch (手錄 sau2 biul), a

foot (腳 goekS), and a nose brush (鼻刷 bei6 caatS) were presented. The children

were asked to select from the four picture the one that corresponded to the concept of

a foot watch. The maximum score of this task was sixteen, and its Cronbach's a

was .68.

The morphological construction task consisted of two trial items and twenty

test items. For each item, a scenario was orally presented, and children were asked to

actively construct words for newly presented objects or concepts according to the

scenarios. To make the initial items as easy to understand as possible, the two trial

items and first three scenarios were aided with illustrations, whereas the remaining

items consisted of more abstract scenarios that were not accompanied by pictures.

One example is indicated below. If a web that is made by a spider, we call it a spider

web (虫知蛛、網 zil zyul mongS). How will we call the web which is made by an ant?

The answer is an ant web (；)蟻’網 maa5 ngaiS mongS). The maximum score of this

task was twenty, and its Cronbach's a was .81.

Nonverbal IQ. The Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM; Raven,


Court, & Raven, 1995) was used to measure children's nonverbal IQ at pretesting

only. The RCPM is an assessment of cognitive development in children between five

to eleven years old. It consists of thirty-six colored multiple-choice items in which a

missing part has to be chosen from among six alternatives to complete a matrix-like

pattern. The test is composed of three subsets A, Ab, and B, each consisting of twelve

items. In this study, only sets A and B with twenty-four items in total was used. The

maximum score of this task was twenty four, and its Cronbach's a was .63.

Reading interest. A 6-item questionnaire was administered to assess

children's interest in reading at both pretesting and posttesting. The items of this

questionnaire were adapted from a questionnaire measuring children's interest in

literacy-related episodes, including reading and learning to read and write characters,

which have been successfully administered to Hong Kong kindergarteners in

previous research (Lau & McBride-Chang，2005). Each of the six items represented a

reading-related episode. For example, in one item of this task, the child was asked

whether he or she enjoyed reading with his or her mother. Also, in another item of

this task, the child was asked whether he or she enjoyed going to the library. Children

were shown a picture with four different faces, namely very unhappy, unhappy,

happy and very happy, and then were asked to differentiate those faces. For each item,

the experimenter read out the item and the children were required to select one of the

faces that corresponded to their happiness or unhappiness in the particular

reading-related episode. If the question was not applicable to the child, a choice of

"n/a" was provided. Total score was divided by the number of questions applicable to

the child and this score was used for analysis. The maximum score of this task was


five, and its Cronbach's a was .75. The children's questionnaire on reading interest is

presented in Appendix A.

Storybook identification. This task consisted of twenty-four pictures of

storybook cover pages, half of which were storybooks used in this study (targets) and

half of which were not (distracters). To ensure that the distracters looked similar to

the targets and they had not been read by the participating children, distracters were

selected from the same series but different level of storybooks as the targets, and

these storybooks were all developed and published in the mainland China only.

Children were asked to select from the twenty-four pictures, those they had read

before. This task was administered at posttesting only and served as a measure of the

number of storybooks read during the 12-week program. Scores were calculated by

subtracting the number of distracter chosen from the number of target chosen. Higher

scores reflected more storybooks used in this study were read, and the maximum

score of this task was twelve. The storybook identification task is presented in

Appendix B.

Demographic questionnaire. A demographic information questionnaire was

distributed to the parents of participating children before the 12-week program. It

consisted of questions about participating children's school, class, sex, date of birth,

maternal education level, maternal occupation, paternal education level, paternal

occupation, family income, and reading resources and practices at home. The

demographic questionnaire is shown in Appendix C.

Follow-up questionnaire. A follow-up questionnaire for evaluating the

12-week program was distributed to the parents in the dialogic reading and the

dialogic reading with morphology training conditions after the 12-week program.


The purpose of this questionnaire was to collect feedbacks from parents on the

dialogic reading method and the morphology training. It included questions about

whether they liked the dialogic reading and morphology training methods and

whether they employed the dialogic reading technique when they read other books

with their children. The follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading and the

dialogic reading with morphology training conditions are shown in Appendices D

and E respectively.

Procedure

After informed consent had been obtained from parents, the parents were

given a demographic information questionnaire. The children were pretested in two

30-minutes sessions in their school by trained psychology major undergraduates and

postgraduates who were blind to the group placements. The subjects were

administered the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM; Raven, Court, &

Raven, 1995)，the Chinese character recognition task, the Cantonese receptive

vocabulary test, the Cantonese vocabulary production test, the syllable deletion task,

the morpheme identification task, the receptive morphological awareness task, the

morphological construction task, and the children's questionnaire on reading interest.

Children were assigned randomly to one of the four conditions, dialogic

reading with morphology training, dialogic reading, typical reading, and control.

Dialogic reading techniques developed by Whitehurst et al. (1988) and morphology

training designed for the purpose of this study were used in the dialogic reading with

morphology training condition. Dialogic reading techniques developed by

Whitehurst et al. (1988) were used in the dialogic reading condition. A typical

reading condition was included to investigate the effects of the dialogic reading and


morphological training methods. Parents in the typical reading were provided with

books and they were required to read to their children as they normally would. Also,

a control condition was involved to distinguish improvement due to normal

development or experimental manipulation. Sex ratios in each group were checked.

To ensure the sampling was unbiased, separate ANOVAs were conducted to

compare the differences of pretest measures among the four groups. The sex ratios

were balanced across groups and there were no significant differences in the pretest

measures.

Materials were then distributed to the participants of the dialogic reading with

morphology training, dialogic reading and typical reading groups. The parent-child

reading program was conducted for 12 weeks. After the 12-week program, children

were immediately posttested on the tasks same to those used in pretesting except the

RCPM was not administered. Apart from these, the storybook identification task was

also administered. The storybooks were given to the control group after the

posttesting. All participating children were presented a certificate after the

posttesting to thank them for participation. A workshop on dialogic reading and

morphology training was held after the posttesting for all participating parents.

Dialogic-reading

In the dialogic reading program, each participant was provided with a total of

12 books with hints for prompt questions added in each book, a dialogic reading

guideline, and a dialogic reading bookmark. Books used in the present study

included a lot of pictures and did not rely heavily on the written text because these

books could reduce straight reading by parents and encourage children's participation

during the story time. Titles of these books are indicated in appendix F. Parents were


encouraged to read each book twice in a week for 20 minutes each time with their

children. A one-hour training session was held before the reading intervention started

in the schools. In the training session, parents were trained to use dialogic reading

strategies and the materials through instruction and demonstration. The dialogic

reading guideline and bookmark included information about the dialogic reading

technique, and they are shown in appendices G and H respectively. The fundamental

reading technique in dialogic reading is the PEER sequence in parent-child reading.

The parent prompts the child to say something about the storybook, evaluates the

child's response, expands the child's responses by rephrasing and adding information,

and repeats the prompt to ensure the child has learned from the expansion. There are

five types of prompts used in the dialogic reading technique. First, Completion

prompts are fill-in-the-blank questions which provide children with information

about the structure of language (e.g.熊寶寶的藍子是的 ° Little Bear's basket is

.). Second, Recall prompts are questions about what happened in the book the

children have already read which help children to understand story plot and describe

sequences of events (e.g.熊寶寶到哪裡去了？ Where has Little Bear gone?). Third,

Open-ended prompts are statements that encourage the children to respond in their

own words which increases their expressive fluency and attend to detail (e .g.現在請

你告訴我這頁考I•生了甚麼事。It's your turn to tell me what's happening on this

page.). Fourth, Wh-prompts are usually what, where, when, why, and how questions

which help children to leam new vocabulary (e.g.熊爸爸、熊媽媽和熊寶寶到森林

裡做甚麼？ What are Father Bear, Mother Bear and Little Bear going to do in the

forest?). Distancing prompts are questions which require children to relate the

content of the book with their experience outside the book, helping to improve their

%


verbal fluency, conversational abilities, and narrative skills (e.g. ： (口果4尔在街上5艮爸

爸媽媽走失了，你會怎樣做？ If you get lost in a street, what will you do?).

Parents were contacted over the phone on a fortnightly basis to remind them

to read the books with their children and to find out if they encountered any problems

with dialogic reading techniques. A follow-up questionnaire was distributed to

parents after the posttesting of their children.

Dialogic reading with morphology training

The materials provided to this group were the same with the dialogic reading

group, except morphology training materials and techniques were added. A

morphology training guideline, a morphological construction training book, and a

homophone training book, were provided at the beginning of the program together

with the other dialogic reading materials. A one-hour training session was held before

the reading intervention started in the schools. In the training session, parents were

trained to employ dialogic reading and morphology training strategies, and they were

taught to use the materials for dialogic reading and morphology training through

instruction and demonstration. The morphology training guideline includes

information about the morphology in Chinese language and techniques to enhance

children's awareness on morphology, and it is presented in Appendix I. As

kindergarteners were beginning readers and the morphology training in this study did

not target on teaching prints, the morphology training involved focused on sound and

meaning training, and teaching on prints were not involved. To utilize the materials

and technique used in dialogic reading to teach morphology, the content of the

morphology training materials corresponded to the book they read that week.

Morphological construction training focused on sensitizing children's


awareness on the morphosyllabic property of Chinese, and identifying morphemes in

pairs or groups of several words. For instance, in one of the items of the

morphological construction training, the story they read showed a farmer pulling a

'carrot king'(綠葡王）from the ground. Corresponding to this story, the target item

was 'carrot king'(藥葡王)’ and the morphological construction training materials

included pictures of a big watermelon and a big ice-cream. Parents were firstly

required to explain to their child that a 'carrot king'(蘿葡王）represented a big carrot.

With the aid of the picture, parents were then required to explain to their child that a

'watermelon king，（西瓜王）represented a big watermelon. After that, the child was

asked to composite words or phrases with the meaning of a big ice-cream, and the

answer would be an 'ice-cream king'(雪糕、王)• The sample items of the

morphological construction training are shown in Appendix J. There were totally 53

items, 4.5 items for each story on average, for the morphological construction

training.

Homophone training focused on sensitizing children's awareness on the same

syllable might represent different meaning. For instance, in one of the items of the

homophone training, the story they read showed a little sheep looking for its mother.

Corresponding to this story, the target item was the little sheep ('J、：：; siu2 joeng4),

and the target syllable was joeng4. The homophone training materials included

pictures of the sun (太歷；taai3 ioens4) and the sea (海洋;ho i2 joeng4) . Parents

were required to label the little sheep (小：(：；siu2joeng£), the sun (太歷；taaiS

ioens4) and the sea (海蓬；hoi2 joens4) corresponding to the pictures in the

storybook and the training book. The child was then asked to select the picture which

corresponded to the meanings of the wool (J：毛；ioens4 mou4) and the sunlight


光；joens4 gwongl), and the answers would be the sheep ( ' J � s i u 2 J o e n g 4 ) and

the sun (太歷； taai3joeng£) respectively. The sample items of the homophone

training are presented in Appendix K. There were totally 67 items, 5.5 items for each

story on average, for the homophone training.

Parents were encouraged to read each book including morphology training

twice in a week for 20 minutes each time with their children, as the same with the

dialogic reading group. Parents were contacted over the phone on a fortnightly basis

to remind them to read the books with their children and to find out if they encounter

any problems with dialogic reading and morphology training. A follow-up

questionnaire was distributed to parents after the posttesting of their children.

Typical reading

Participants were provided with 12 books which were the same as those used

in the dialogic reading and the dialogic reading with morphology training conditions

before the program. However, no hints were added on the books. Parents were

requested to read to their children as they normally would, and were encouraged to

read each book twice in a week for 20 minutes each time with their children. Parents

were contacted over the phone on a fortnightly basis to remind them to read the

books with their children.

Control

No books were initially provided, and parents were expected to rely on their

regular literacy habits with their children during the 12-week program. After the

posttesting, a set of 12 books were given to the participants.


Chapter Three : Results

Pretest measures

To ensure the sampling was unbiased, separate ANOVAs were conducted to

compare the differences of demographics, and home literacy resources and practices

among the four conditions. The four conditions did not differ significantly on any of

these demographics and home literacy measures, including chronological age, F(3,

144) = 1.48,/7> .05, sex,厂(3，144) = .01,；7> .05, maternal educational level, F(3,

123) = .97，p > .05，paternal educational level, F(3, 123) = M, p > .05, family

income, F(3, 121) = .98,/? > .05, number of books owned by children, F(3, 123)=

1.24,p > .05, frequency of parent-child reading, F(3, 124) = \ . 0 7 , p > .05, and

parents' daily reading habits, F(3, 124) = .58,/? > .05 • The descriptive statistics on

demographics, and home literacy resources and practices are presented in Tables 1

and 2 respectively.


Table 1. Descriptive Statistics on the Demographic Measures.

Conditions N M 边

Chronological age (in months) DR+MT 38 64.82 3.74 DR 37 63.11 4.07 TR 37 63.32 3.59 Control 36 63.92 4.00 Total 148 63.80 3.87 Maternal education DR+MT 36 3.06 1.01 DR 29 3.17 1.14 TR 32 2.75 .98 Control 30 2.93 .94 Total 127 2.98 1.02 Paternal education DR+MT 36 3.33 1.01 DR 30 3.47 1.04 TR 31 3.13 1.02 Control 30 3.10 1.03 Total 127 3.26 1.03 Family income DR+MT 35 4.77 1.03 DR 30 4.87 1.04 TR 31 4.48 1.03 Control 29 4.86 .92 Total ^ 1.01 Gender Male Female DR+MT 23 15 DR 23 14 TR 23 14 Control 22 14 Total 9\ 57

Note. The maternal and paternal educational levels were entered as follow:

1 = primary, 2 = secondary, 3 = preparatory, 4 = college, 5 = postgraduate.

The family income was entered as follow:

1 = <$5000, 2 = $5000 - 9999，3 = $10000 - 19999, 4 = $20000 - 39999,

5 = $40000 - 59999, 6 = >$60000.


Table 2. Descriptive Statistics on the Home Literacy Resources and Practices

Measures.

Conditions N M S.D. Number of storybooks DR+MT 36 4.11 .82 DR 29 3.79 .94 TR 32 3.78 1.01 Control 30 3.73 .87 Total 127 3.87 .91 Frequency of parent-child reading DR+MT 36 4.64 .72 DR 30 4.80 .61 TR 32 4.75 .44 Control 30 4.50 .97 Total 128 4.67 .71 Parents' daily reading habits DR+MT 36 3.28 .82 DR 30 3.33 .92 TR 32 3.38 .79 Control 30 3.10 1.00 Total

The number of storybooks was entered as follow:

1 = none, 2 = <10, 3 = 10-29, 4 = 30-49, 5 = >50.

Frequency of parent-child reading was entered as follow:

1 = none, 2 = <10 in a year, 3 = once a month, 4 = once a week, 5 = >1 in a week.

Parents' daily reading habits was entered as follow:

1 = none, 2 = 0-15 minutes, 3 = 15-29 minutes, 4 = 30-59 minutes, 5 = 1-2 hours,

6 = >2 hours.

Another ANOVA was used to compare scores on the Raven's Colored

Progressive Matrices (RCPM) among the groups to test for factor that might affect

the children's language and literacy standard as well as their capacity for

improvement. No significant difference was found, F(3, 144) = 1.32, p > .05. The

descriptive statistics for the RCPM scores are presented in Table 3.


Table 3. Descriptive Statistics for the Raven 's Colored Progressive Matrices Scores.

Conditions N M 坠

DR+MT 38 13.18 3.11 DR 37 13.38 2.81 TR 37 12.57 2.51 Control 36 12.61 2.97 Total 148 12.94 2.85

Accordingly , these pretest measures were not included in further analyses.

Eight separate ANOVAs were conducted to compare pretest scores among the

four groups on the tasks of Chinese character recognition, Cantonese receptive

vocabulary, Cantonese vocabulary production, syllable deletion, morpheme

identification, receptive morphological awareness, morphological construction, and

reading interest, to ensure that any group differences were not due to biased sampling.

No significant differences were found on the pretest scores of these tasks among the

four groups, F(3, 144) = .66, p > .05 for the Chinese character recognition task; F(3,

144) = .33,/? > .05 for the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test; F(3, 144) = .64,/?

> .05 for the Cantonese vocabulary production test; F(3, 144) = .46,/? > .05 for the

syllable deletion task; F(3, 144) = .09,/? > .05 for the morpheme identification task;

尸(3，144) = •l\,p> .05 for the receptive morphological awareness test; F(3, 144)

=.43,/? > .05 for the morphological construction task; and F(3, 144) = .99, p> .05

for the children's questionnaire on reading interest. Non-significant differences of the

pretest scores indicate that the sampling was unbiased.

The descriptive statistics for the scores of the Chinese character recognition

task, the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test, the Cantonese vocabulary production

test, and the children's questionnaire on reading interest, are presented in Table 4.

The descriptive statistics for the scores of morphological and phonological measures


are presented in Table 5.

Table 4. Descriptive Statistics on the Character Recognition and Vocabulary

Measures, and the Children 's Questionnaire on Reading Interest.

Conditions Pretest Posttest N M S.D. N M S.D.

Chinese Character recognition DR+MT 38 52.45 27.54 38 67.11 27.64 DR 37 50.86 26.49 37 60.89 26.98 TR 37 50.00 25.97 37 60.22 26.36 Control 36 50.19 25.47 36 60.08 29.27 Total 148 50.89 26.14 148 62.12 27.45 Cantonese receptive vocabulary DR+MT 38 37.39 6.84 38 41.37 7.05 DR 37 36.19 5.59 37 41.19 5.60 TR 37 36.41 5.93 37 38.86 5.07 Control 36 37.19 6.73 36 38.75 6.47 Total 148 36.80 6.25 148 40.06 6.17 Cantonese productive vocabulary DR+MT 38 16.55 6.36 38 18.63 9.90 DR 37 16.22 6.60 37 19.03 7.88 TR 37 14.41 7.38 37 17.54 9.60 Control 36 15.94 8.48 36 18.75 6.03 Total 148 15.78 7.21 148 18.49 8.45 Children's questionnaire on reading interest DR+MT 38 3.30 .43 38 3.46 .38 DR 37 3.26 .58 37 3.42 .45 TR 37 3.44 .41 37 3.36 .47 Control 36 3.37 .51 36 3.23 .54 Total 148 3.34 .49 148 3.37 .47


Table 5. Descriptive Statistics on the Morphological and Phonological Measures.

Conditions Pretest Posttest N M S.D. N M S.D.

Morpheme identification DR+MT 38 6.79 2.65 38 8.18 2.46 DR 37 6.97 2.51 37 7.24 2.24 TR 37 7.05 2.29 37 6.95 2.27 Control 36 7.03 2.37 36 7.14 2.58 Total 148 6.96 2.44 148 7.39 2.42 Receptive morphological awareness DR+MT 38 12.42 3.09 38 13.84 2.34 DR 37 11.54 2.99 37 13.05 2.65 TR 37 11.86 2.73 37 13.43 1.97 Control 36 12.19 2.24 36 13.14 3.13 Total 148 12.01 2.78 148 13.37 2.54 Morphological construction DR+MT 38 8.97 3.55 38 11.45 3.81 DR 37 8.86 4.20 37 11.57 3.56 TR 37 8.08 3.80 37 10.03 3.51 Control 36 8.36 4.16 36 11.72 3.51 Total 148 8.57 3.91 148 11.19 3.63 Syllable deletion DR+MT 38 8.76 3.60 38 11.50 3.26 DR 37 9.78 4.11 37 11.49 3.23 TR 37 9.05 4.04 37 12.05 3.05 Control 36 8.86 4.84 36 11.08 4.22 Total 148 9.11 4.14 148 11.53 3.45

Storybook Identification

The descriptive statistics for the storybook identification scores are presented

in Table 6. As shown in Table 6，children in the control group, who had not read any

of the books included in this task, scored near zero on average, indicating that this

task would possibly be a reliable task to distinguish children who did or did not read

the storybooks. Children in the dialogic reading with morphology training, dialogic

reading, and typical reading conditions scored from ten to eleven on average,


suggesting that children in these conditions had read most of the books during the

12-week reading program.

Table 6. Descriptive Statistics for the Storybook Identification Scores.

Conditions N M S^ DR+MT 38 10.97 2.33 DR 37 10.35 2.32 TR 37 11.00 1.63 Control 36 .47 1.18 Total 148 8 2 7 4.84

Group improvement

Eight separate repeated measures analyses were performed on the tasks of

Chinese character recognition, Cantonese receptive vocabulary, Cantonese

vocabulary production, syllable deletion, morpheme identification, receptive

morphological awareness, morphological construction, and reading interest, to

compare improvement across groups before and after the 12-week program. The

descriptive statistics for the pretest and posttest scores of the Chinese character

recognition task, the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test, the Cantonese vocabulary

production test, and the children's questionnaire on reading interest, are presented in

Table 4. The descriptive statistics for the pretest and posttest scores of morphological

and phonological measures are presented in Table 5.

Time effects

Effects across time were found to be significant for the Chinese character

recognition task, F(3, 144) = 53.02,;? < .05，the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test,

F(3, 144) = 255.78, p < .05，the Cantonese vocabulary production test, F(3, 144)=

15 .21 ,p< .05，the syllable deletion taskF(3, 144) = 73.75,/?< .05, the receptive

morphological awareness rest, F(3, 144) = 34.67,/? < .05，and the morphological


construction task, F(3, 144) = 85.70, p < .05，which indicated posttest scores

significantly differ from the pretest scores across all four groups. A marginally

significant effect across time was found for the morphological identification task, F(3,

144) = 3.40, p < .07’ and non-significant effect across time was shown for the

children's questionnaire on reading interest, F(3, 144) = 29, p> .05.

Interaction effects

Significant interaction effects were found for the Chinese character

recognition task, F(3, 144) = 2.94, p< .05, the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test,

F{3, 144) = 2.77’ p < .05’ and the children's questionnaire on reading interest, F(3,

144) = 2.81,/? < .05, indicating different conditions yielded different degrees of

changes in scores.

To investigate which conditions yielded greater improvement, different scores

of these tasks were calculated by subtracting the posttest scores from the pretest

scores for each group. Separate ANOVAs and LSD post hoc tests were conducted on

the different scores of each task. Also, in order to further investigate the effectiveness

of the intervention, a Cohen's d was conducted to determine the effect size for all

significant and marginally significant findings. Cohen's d was calculated by dividing

the difference between the posttest score of the intervention group and that of the

reference group by the root mean square of the standard deviation for these groups

(Cohen, 1988). Cohen's d = .2, .5 and .8 represent small, medium and large effect

respectively (Cohen, 1988). The typical effect size in published reports of

educational and psychological interventions is about .33 (Cohen, 1977; Sedlmeier &

Gigerenzer, 1989).

Significant differences were found for Chinese character recognition task, F(3,


144) = 1.1%, p < .05, and LSD post hoc tests showed significant differences between

the dialogic reading with morphological training group and all other three groups {p

< .05). Other group differences were not significant. Cohen's d of the dialogic

reading with morphology training and the dialogic reading groups was .68’ the

dialogic reading with morphology training and the typical reading groups was .56,

and the dialogic reading with morphology training and the control groups was .52.

Effect size indices showed medium effects of the dialogic reading with morphology

training on Chinese reading ability. Direct comparisons between the pretest and

posttest scores on the Chinese character recognition task are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Pretest and posttest mean scores on the Chinese character recognition task

of the four groups.

75

65 . ^ ^ g> ^ ^ —•— DR+MT 8 60 - b - D R CO 55 — . ——- ~A TR S 丨 Control

40 • -T-----

Pretest Posttest

Significant differences were found for the Cantonese receptive vocabulary

test, F(3, 144) = 2.77, p < .05，and LSD post hoc tests indicated significant

differences between the dialogic reading and the typical reading conditions {p < .05),

and between the dialogic reading and the control conditions {p < .05). The

differences between the dialogic reading with morphology training and the control

conditions were found to be marginally significant (p < .06). Other group differences


were not significant. Cohen's d of the dialogic reading with morphology training and

the control groups was .43，the dialogic reading and typical reading groups was .49，

and the dialogic reading and the control groups was .59. Effect size indices showed

medium effects of the dialogic reading with morphology training, and dialogic

reading on Cantonese receptive vocabulary ability. Direct comparisons between the

pretest and posttest scores on the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test are shown in

Figure 2,

Figure 2. Pretest and posttest mean scores on the Cantonese receptive vocabulary

test of the four groups.

E 39 = —— | - ^ d r + M T

1 ：：: - - 二 2 - ^ C o n t r o l

3 6 • — 35 、 --

Pretest Posttest

Significant differences were found for the children's questionnaire on reading

interest, F(3, 144) = 2.81,/? < .05，and LSD post hoc tests indicated significant

differences between the dialogic reading with morphology training and the control

conditions {p < .05)，and between the dialogic reading and the control conditions {p

< .05. The differences between the dialogic reading and the typical reading

conditions were found to be marginally significant {p < .07). Other group differences

were not significant. Cohen's d of the dialogic reading with morphology training and

the control groups was .62’ the dialogic reading and the typical reading groups

Dialogic reading and morpho logy training 45

was .44’ and the dialogic reading and the control groups was .55. Effect size indices

showed medium effects of the dialogic reading with morphology training, and the

dialogic reading on reading interest. Direct comparisons between the pretest and

posttest scores on the children's questionnaire on reading interest are shown in

Figure 3.

Figure 3. Pretest and posttest mean scores on the children 's questionnaire on reading

interest of the four groups.

3 5

3.45 ^

I 0) 3.4 I DR+MT—

I 3.35 一 1 + 讯

芝 3 3 ^ Control

3 • 2 5 — — ‘ • 一 — . . . I ” - •••-• — — - • •

3 . 2 广 1 — —

Pretest Posttest

Interaction effects were not significant for the Cantonese vocabulary

production test, F(3, 144) = .11,/? > .05, the syllable deletion taskF(3, 144) = 1.05,/?

> .05, the morpheme identification task, F(3, 144) = 2.23,/? > .05, the receptive

morphological awareness rest, F(3, 144) = 37,p> .05, and the morphological

construction task, F(3, 144) = 1.06，p〉.05，indicating different conditions did not

yield different degrees of changes in scores. Although interaction effect of the

morpheme identification task was not statistically significant, it is worth noticing that

there was a trend of greater improvement of the dialogic reading with morphology

training group compared to the other three groups. To investigate whether there was a

trend of greater improvement of the dialogic reading with morphology training


condition, different score analyses were also performed. An ANOVA and LSD post

hoc tests were conducted on the different scores of the morpheme identification task.

Marginally significant differences were found, F(3, 144) =2.54 ,p< .06，and LSD

post hoc tests showed significant differences between the dialogic reading with

morphology training and the typical reading conditions, and the dialogic reading with

morphology training and the control conditions {p < ,05). Marginally significant

differences were found between the dialogic reading with morphology training and

the dialogic reading conditions {p < .06), reflecting a trend of greater improvement of

the dialogic reading with morphology training group. Cohen's d of the dialogic

reading with morphology training and the dialogic reading groups was .45, the

dialogic reading with morphology training and the typical reading groups was .57，

and the dialogic reading with morphology training and the control groups was .54.

Effect size indices showed medium effects of the dialogic reading with morphology

training on morpheme identification skill. Direct comparisons between the pretest

and posttest scores on the morpheme identification task are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Pretest and posttest mean scores on the morpheme identification task of the

four groups.

8 5 -

8 — Z

田 7 5 —•—DR+MT

1 + d r

① 7 ' i .- -,

2 -•—Control I

6 . 5 - • 一 - — — “ I i

c I Q ] - • - . I - - -- • • - - - - -

Pretest Posttest


Follow-up questionnaire

70% (26/37) parents of the dialogic reading group and 84% (32/38) parents of

the dialogic reading with morphology training group returned the follow-up

questionnaire. 81 % of the parents reported that they liked the dialogic reading

method while no parents disliked it. 84% of the parents used the dialogic reading

techniques when they read storybooks other than those used in the present study with

their children. 82% of the parents of the dialogic reading with morphology training

group reported that they liked the morphology training whereas 6% of parents

disliked it. The parents who disliked the morphology training expressed concerns

about whether their child might leam uncommon phrase through morphological

construction training.

Responses of the morphological construction task

To enhance the understanding of children's ability to manipulate morphemes

and generalize it to new conditions, children's individual responses on the

morphological construction task were analyzed. Among a total of 2960 responses

produced, 55.95% of them (1656) were correct answers with all target morphemes

included and the sequence of morpheme order conforming to the grammatical rules

of Cantonese. A minority was no responses, which contributed to 7.77% of all

answers (230). Some children produced incorrect answers which did not include all

target morphemes or/and the sequence of morpheme order did not conform to the

grammatical rules of Cantonese. These answers contributed to 36.28% of all

responses produced (1074), and there were a variety of incorrect responses. Among

these incorrect responses, some demonstrated the identification of at least one target

morpheme from the items. For example, the response given for an item with target


answer 大藍花{claai6 laam4 faal： big blue flower) was 花朵 ( f a a l do2 ； flower).

Also, some responses indicated the combination of target morphemes, with the

correct sequence of morpheme order. For example, the response given for an item

with target answer 大藍花{daai6 laam4 faal; big blue flower) was 藍花{laam4

faal; blue flower). Besides, some children substituted parts of the target morphemes

with other morphemes or words carrying very similar semantic concepts with the

target morphemes, and these responses contained all semantic concepts included in

the target answers. For example, the target morphemes of an item were 曰景 ( ja t6

gi"g2; day view), but the response given was 早景 g i n g 2 ; morning view). In

addition, some responses combined the target morphemes with other morphemes or

words which were not included in the items. For example, the target morphemes of

an item were 大藍花{daai6 laam4 faal; big blue flower), but the response

produced was 大藍綠花{daaiO laam4 luk6 faal; big blue green flower), where 綠

{luk6; green) was not included in the item. Apart from the identification and the

combination of morphemes, responses which did not contain the target morphemes

but included semantically related concepts were obtained. For example, the response

given for an item with target answer 月落 ( j y u t 6 ceotl; moon goes down) was 早上

{zou2 seong6; morning).

In this task, only a few answers given were no responses, but over 90% of

answers produced were a variety of correct or incorrect responses, revealing that

children were able to make up novel vocabulary words they had not encountered

before productively, and there are variations in the acquisition of morphological

awareness.


Chapter Four: Discussion

The present study investigated the effectiveness of the dialogic reading

method, and a combination of dialogic reading method and morphology training, on

facilitating children's language, literacy, phonological and morphological skills, and

their interest in reading. The findings of this study extend past research on the

dialogic reading method by demonstrating that dialogic reading techniques, apart

from enhancing children's language growth, could raise children's interest in reading.

Also, as a new extension of past studies on dialogic reading and linguistic training,

the integration of dialogic reading and morphology training was found to be

successful. Findings of the present study indicate that the combination of dialogic

reading and morphology training enhanced children's development on language,

literacy, and raised children's reading interest.

The experimental design of the present study was based on what had been

done in Whitehurst and colleagues' studies of dialogic reading and phonology

training intervention conducted in the west (1994, 1999), and Chow and

McBride-Chang's (2003) dialogic reading research conducted on Chinese children.

The main difference between the present study and those of Whitehurst, apart from

the linguistic skills trained, was that the dialogic reading with morphology training

intervention was compared with the dialogic reading, the typical reading and the

control conditions in this study, whereas the dialogic reading with sound and letter

awareness training intervention was compared with the control group only in

previous research by Whitehurst, Epstein et al. (1994) and Whitehurst et al. (1999).

While relative contributions of the dialogic reading component versus the linguistic

training component to children's improvement was unclear in previous research by


Whitehurst, Epstein et al. (1994) and Whitehurst et al. (1999), the design of the

present study provides a clearer picture of the relative contributions of dialogic

reading and linguistic training. The present study included one more group, the

dialogic reading with morphology training, compared to Chow and McBride-Chang

(2003), to explore the impacts of the dialogic reading with morphology training on

children's language, literacy and linguistic skills growth in Chinese. Also, the present

study assessed character recognition, productive vocabulary, linguistic skills and

reading interest, and included the storybook identification task as an indicator of

compliance to the program, and these were not administered in Chow and

McBride-Chang (2003).

Dialogic reading

Findings of the present study demonstrated that the dialogic reading

intervention yielded greater gains in children's receptive vocabulary and reading

interest compared to the typical reading and the control conditions. The positive

impacts of dialogic reading on children's receptive vocabulary growth have been

widely shown in past studies (e.g., Lim, 1999; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst，

1992), and the findings of the present study have further supported the effectiveness

of dialogic reading on enhancing receptive vocabulary growth among Chinese

children (Chow & McBride-Chang，2003; Fung et a l , 2005).

Past studies have demonstrated dialogic reading enhances growth in

expressive vocabulary (e.g., Hargrave & Senechal, 2000; Huebner, 2000; Whitehurst

et al., 1988; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992). Although the dialogic reading

intervention facilitated receptive vocabulary development, the gains in productive

vocabulary in the dialogic reading condition did not significantly differ from those in


the typical reading and the control conditions in the present study. Inconsistent

results might be attributed to two reasons. First, the developmental trajectories and

demands of receptive and expressive vocabularies are different. Children's

vocabulary development is a gradual process in which receptive vocabulary

knowledge tends to precede expressive vocabulary skills (Senechal, 1997). Although

receptive and expressive vocabulary skills depend similarly on semantic knowledge,

they involve different phonological skills. While the receptive vocabulary task

requires children to select pictures corresponding to the vocabulary read by the

experimenter, the expressive vocabulary task requires children to give an oral

response which involves greater demands on the phonological skills (Chiappe,

Chiappe, & Gottardo，2004). Therefore, improved receptive vocabulary skills could

be the first step in expressive vocabulary development (Piramal & Law，2001).

Dialogic reading may generate immediate gains in receptive vocabulary, followed by

more gradual growth in expressive vocabulary learning. Studies have demonstrated

various strategies used during shared book reading differentially influence children's

receptive and expressive vocabulary learning (e.g., Senechal, 1997). Findings of this

research were in line with those of Piramal and Law (2001). Piramal and Law (2001)

conducted a vocabulary teaching program for preschoolers and indicated significant

differences in the growth of receptive vocabulary for the intervention group

compared to the control group, while no improvement in expressive vocabulary was

found for either group.

Second, the nature of tasks administered to measure children's expressive and

productive vocabulary in past research and the present study were different. In the

dialogic reading research which demonstrated greater gains in expressive vocabulary


(e.g., Hargrave & S6n6chal，2000; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992; Whitehurst

et al., 1988), expressive vocabulary tasks involved presenting children with objects

and requiring them to describe the objects (e.g., the ITPA-VE), or requiring children

to label pictured items (e.g., the EOWEVT). However, children were asked orally to

explain concepts and objects during the productive vocabulary task in this study. The

different nature and demands of tasks might contribute to the inconsistent results.

Findings of this study showed that the gains in Chinese character recognition

in the dialogic reading condition did not significantly differ from those in the typical

reading and the control conditions. One possible reason for this is the acquisition of

character recognition, which is a domain of literacy, differs from that of vocabulary,

which is a domain of oral language (e.g., Snow, 1983; Whitehurst, Epstein et al.,

1994). Vocabulary can develop naturally out of children's interactions with the

environment, and explicit instruction is not necessary (Senechal et al., 2001).

However, the ability to read characters does not develop without experiences with

prints, and explicit teaching is required (Senechal et al., 2001). Vocabulary

development general precedes reading development at the early years, and they later

interact and are mutually enhanced by each other. Different demands and

developmental trajectories of the vocabulary knowledge and the ability to read

characters might contribute to differential influences of dialogic reading on them.

Also, the principle focus of dialogic reading is on facilitating children's oral

language skills through parent-child interaction (Whitehurst et al., 1988) and the

dialogic reading technique does not emphasize teaching or discussion on prints.

Implicit interaction with print, such as parent-child reading, is effective in enhancing

oral language, whereas explicit interaction, such as teaching the child to read and


write, is effective in enhancing written language (Senechal, LeFevre, Thomas, &

Daley, 1998). Therefore, the effects of dialogic reading on children's literacy

development might be weaker than its effects on children's oral language skills.

Results of this study further supported the development of oral language and literacy

undergoes different processes.

This study explored the impacts of dialogic reading on children's linguistic

awareness. Improvement in syllabic and morphological awareness did not

significantly differ across the dialogic reading, the typical reading and the control

conditions. These results are consistent with those of Whitehurst, Epstein et al (1994)

and Whitehurst et al. (1999). Through interaction was expected to be useful in

enhancing children's linguistic skills, some studies have suggested that oral

scaffolding does not affect linguistic awareness development. For example, Fey,

Cleave, Ravida, Long, Dejmal, and Easton (1994) found that after a ten-month

intervention of oral scaffolding of specific syntactic forms, preschoolers in the

intervention group showed greater improvement on syntactic but not phonological

skills. As daily language usage and literacy experience could, to a certain extent,

support children's syllabic and morphological awareness development, additional

interaction during dialogic reading might not further foster their syllabic and

morphological awareness growth. More research is needed to investigate the

relationship between dialogic reading and linguistic skills.

Apart from enhancing children's receptive vocabulary skill, dialogic reading

raised children's interest in reading. Children in the dialogic reading condition had

significantly greater gains in reading interest than children in the control group, and

the increase in reading interest was marginally significant between the dialogic


reading and the typical reading conditions. These findings contribute to the

understandings of how shared reading and how parents read to their children enhance

children's interest in reading. They are in line with findings of Ortiz et al. (2001), and

further supports the positive impacts of parent-child interaction during shared book

reading on children's interest in reading. The change in reading interest should be

noted because differences in child interest in books may evoke variations in

literacy-relevant experience, which in-tum influence children's language and literacy

development (Dale, Crain-Thoreson, & Robinson，1995). Also, interest in reading is

one of the preschool accomplishments that is of particular relevance to later

academic challenges (Snow et al., 1998).

Dialogic reading with morphology training

Results of the present study indicated that the dialogic reading with

morphology training intervention yielded greater growth in children's character

recognition ability, compared to all three other groups, and produced larger gains in

children's receptive vocabulary skill and reading interest, compared to the control

condition. A trend of greater improvement in the morphological awareness assessed

by the morpheme identification task was shown by the dialogic reading with

morphology training intervention, compared to all other groups.

The enhanced performance of Chinese character recognition in the dialogic

reading with morphology training condition over the dialogic reading group

suggested that morphology training was effective in facilitating children's reading

ability. These findings of facilitated reading ability through morphology training are

consistent with those of past studies of morphology training (e.g., Fu & Huang, 2000;

Nagy et al., 2002), and further supports the effectiveness of morphology training on


children's reading development in Chinese. Also, the results help to build the

theoretical framework of Chinese reading development by supporting the relations

and suggesting a causal relation between morphological awareness and reading

ability in Chinese. The trend of greater improvement of morphological awareness

measured by the morpheme identification task suggested that the morphology

training might produce greater gains in reading ability through enhanced homophone

knowledge.

In this study, children in the dialogic reading with morphology training

condition have larger gains in receptive vocabulary than children in the control

condition only. Improvement in receptive vocabulary did not differ between the

dialogic reading with morphology training, and the dialogic reading and the typical

reading conditions. Findings of the present study revealed that morphology training

did not further enhance children's receptive vocabulary gains when it was combined

with dialogic reading. The combination of dialogic reading and morphology training

fostered receptive vocabulary development, but the effects were weaker than those

produced by dialogic reading itself. As strong evidence, from past research and

findings of this study, on the effectiveness of dialogic reading in enhancing children's

receptive vocabulary growth has been given, weaker effects on receptive vocabulary

growth produced by the dialogic reading with morphology training intervention

might be owing to less time spent on dialogic reading in this condition. Whitehurst,

Epstein et al. (1994) noted that the more parents read dialogically to their children at

home, the more gains in their children's language abilities. During the 12-week

program, all parents, except those in the control group, were encouraged to read with

their child twice in a week for 20 minutes each time. While participants in the


dialogic reading condition were expected to spend 20 minutes each time to read with

the dialogic reading method, participants in the dialogic reading with morphology

training condition were expected to spend less than 20 minutes each time to read

with dialogic reading method because they engaged in morphology training in the

rest of the time. Further studies can investigate the impacts of the duration of dialogic

reading or that of morphology training on children's language development.

Similar to the results of the dialogic reading condition, the gains in productive

vocabulary in the dialogic reading with morphology training condition did not

significantly differ from those of the other groups in the present study. The different

developmental trajectories and demands of receptive and expressive vocabularies as

mentioned before might account for the differential influence of the intervention to

receptive and productive vocabulary development. As the gains of receptive

vocabulary in the dialogic reading with morphology training group was rather weak

compared to that in the dialogic reading group, its effects on productive vocabulary

growth might be minimal.

Also, the combination of dialogic reading and morphology training did not

yield greater improvement in syllabic awareness and morphological awareness

compared to the other conditions, except a trend of greater gains in morphological

awareness assessed by morpheme identification was obtained. This is inconsistent

with past findings that morphology training was effective in facilitating children's

morphological and phonological skills (Fu & Huang, 2000). The contradictory

results can be attributed to the different morphology training and measures

administered. Fu and Huang's (2000) morphology training was a class-based training

involving instruction on radicals. However, the present study involved morphological


construction and homophone training, and the training was individual-based. While

instruction on radicals in Fu and Huang (2000) involved prints, training on

morphological construction and homophone in this study did not focus on prints.

Also, morphological awareness was assessed by the radical tasks in Fu and Huang

(2000), whereas it was measured by the tasks of morpheme identification,

morphological construction and receptive morphological awareness in the present

study. In addition, phonological awareness was assessed by tasks testing phonemic

and tone awareness in Fu and Huang (2000)，whereas it was assessed by a syllabic

awareness task in this research. As different facets of morphological and

phonological awareness were focused, the differential effects of training

demonstrated in Fu and Huang (2000) and this research are reasonable. Further

research can be conducted on training different facets of morphological awareness,

and assessing different levels of morphological and phonological awareness, to

enhance the understanding of the effectiveness of morphology training.

On the other hand, through the dialogic reading with morphology training

condition did not produce significantly better performance on the morphological

construction and the receptive morphological awareness tasks, a trend of greater

improvement on the morpheme identification task was shown. This reflects the fact

that the morphology training tends to be more effective in fostering children's

awareness on homophones, and children may be benefited more from the

homophone training than the morphological construction training. Further studies are

required to indicate the relative contributions and effectiveness of the homophone

and the morphological construction training on Chinese acquisition.

The combination of dialogic reading and morphology training raised


children's interest in reading. Children in the dialogic reading with morphology

training condition showed significantly greater increase in reading interest relative to

those in the control condition. Findings of this research suggest that either dialogic

reading itself or a combination of dialogic reading and morphology training can be

effective in promoting children's interest in reading.

Typical reading

Findings of the present study showed that children in the typical reading

condition did not yield significantly greater improvement across all tasks

administered, compared to the control condition. The findings indicate that typical

parent-child reading may not fully exploit the potential of parent-child reading in

promoting children's literacy and language growth and highlight the importance of

interaction during the reading process. This study provides further evidence on the

positive impacts of children's active participation and interaction between parents

and children during the learning process of children.

Significance of the results from the present study

The present study contributes to the understanding of children's literacy and

language development in Chinese, and provides methods to enhance the quality of

the home literacy activities for children's literacy and language growth. The

theoretical contributions of the present study are threefold. First, this study supports

the positive relations and suggests a causal relation between morphological

awareness and the acquisition of literacy skill in Chinese. It is worth noticing that

training on morphology without involving prints enhanced children's literacy and

language development. Second, the importance of family literacy activities and

pleasurable parent-child interaction on children's literacy and language development,


and their interest in reading, is supported. Third, this study provides empirical

evidence on the possibility and effectiveness of the integration of dialogic reading

and morphology training, and teaching linguistic skills at home, which are new

extensions of past research.

The present study has several practical implications. First, this study provides

effective methods to promote children's literacy and language skills, and reading

interest in a relatively short period of time. The 12-week intervention produced

significant gains in children's literacy, language, and reading interest. Second, the

present study provides methods to facilitate parent-child interaction and to include

linguistic instruction in family literacy activities. According to the feedbacks from

the participating parents, they successfully employed dialogic reading and

morphology training at home. Third, parents with no background in psychology or

linguistics can leam and use these techniques easily. This is particularly important

because parental contribution is the essential component of children's knowledge and

skill acquisition. Lastly, training parents to handle the dialogic reading and

morphology training techniques is cost- and time- efficient. A one-hour training

session and copies of the guidelines were effective to train parents to employ those

techniques at home.

Limitations and suggestions

There are some limitations of this study. The involvement of parents in the

program determined the outcomes of the intervention. Owing to the importance of

parents' compliance, children's storybook identification was used as an indicator of

the implementation of the intervention during the 12-week program. Although this is

a cost- and time- efficient method, it is a relatively indirect method to measure


parents' compliance. It is recommended that a more direct measure of parents'

compliance to the program, such as audiotaping or videotaping of the reading session,

can be included in future studies.

Also, the present study investigated the effects of the intervention on

vocabulary and character recognition abilities as proxies of oral language and literacy

respectively. Future research can include a broader array of oral language and

literacy skills, such as oral fluency and comprehension, to provide a full picture of

the impacts of dialogic reading and morphology training on children's language and

literacy development.

Though positive outcomes on children's literacy and language skills and their

interest in reading were indicated, specific components of dialogic reading

contributed, and relative contributions of the morphological construction and

homophone training, to these positive outcomes have not been demonstrated.

Specific components of dialogic reading, such as parents' modified behavior, parent's

specific types of questioning, and children's increased responsiveness, might be

particularly important to the successfulness of dialogic reading, and investigating the

underlying mechanism of dialogic reading is a promising area of future research.

Also, further studies can be conducted to investigate the relative importance of

morphological construction and homophone training on children's literacy and

language development.

In addition, the dialogic reading method was employed in the present

study to foster Chinese literacy and language development among Hong Kong

children. In Hong Kong, Cantonese pronunciation of the character is used when it is

read aloud, but Modem Standard Chinese is used when it is read or written (Cheung


& Ng, 2003; Fu, 1987). Therefore, Hong Kong children's written Chinese does not

directly correspond to their spoken Cantonese. As dialogic reading was originally

developed for English speaking children whose spoken and written language is more

directly matched, the effects of dialogic reading on Chinese literacy growth might be

relatively small among Hong Kong children. Therefore, it is recommended that a

component of teaching the pronunciation and the meaning of written forms can be

added to the dialogic reading method for Hong Kong children, or children whose

spoken language does not directly correspond to the written one. For instance,

parents can label the words 小孩{siu2 hoi4) and explicitly explain the words 小孩

(a child) in written Chinese correspond to 細路（a child) in spoken Cantonese.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the present study has successfiilly demonstrated dialogic

reading is an effective method in facilitating children's receptive vocabulary

development and interest in reading. Also, the effectiveness of a combination of

dialogic reading and morphology training conducted at home on promoting

children's ability to read characters has been indicated. The findings in the present

study support causal relations between home literacy activities and children's

language and literacy acquisition, and highlight the importance of parent-child

interaction. In addition, a causal relation between morphological awareness and

children's literacy skill is suggested. The present study contributes to enhancing

quality of home literacy activities and promoting children's oral language and

literacy development in the early years.


References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Baker, L., Mackler, K.，Sonnenschein，S.，& Serpell, R. (2001). Parents' interactions

with their first-grade children during storybook reading and relations with

subsequent home reading activity and reading achievement. Journal of School

Psychology, 59(5), 415-438.

Baker, L., Scher, D.，& Mackler, K. (1997). Home and family influences on

motivations for reading. Educational Psychologist, 32, 69-82.

Bradley, L.，& Bryant，P. (1985). Rhyme and reason in reading and spelling. Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Burgess, S. R., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Bidirectional relations of phonological

sensitivity and prereading abilities: Evidence from a preschool sample. Journal

of Experimental Child Psychology, 70{2), 117-141.

Bus, A. G , van Ijzendoom, M. H.’ & Pellegrini，A. D. (1995). Joint book-reading

makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational

transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, (55(1), 1-21.

Bus, A.G. (2003). Social-emotional requisites for learning to read. In A. van Kleeck,

S. A. Stahl, & Bauer, E. B. (Eds.), On reading books to children: Parents and

teachers (pp.3-15). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Butcher, L. S. (1995). Mother tongue literacy maintenance among the children of

recent Chinese immigrants in Brisbane. Adelaide, South Australia: Helios Art

& Book Co.

Byrne, B.’ & Fielding-Bamsley，R. (1990). Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case


for teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 82, 805-812.

Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L.

B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189-209).

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Is there a causal link from phonological

awareness to success in learning to read? Cognition, 91{\), 77-111.

Chan, L.，& Wang, L. (2003). Linguistic awareness in learning to read Chinese: A

comparative study of Beijing and Hong Kong children. In C. McBride-Chang

& H.-C. Chen (Eds.), Reading development in Chinese children (pp. 91-106).

Westport, CT: Praeger Press.

Chen, M. J., & Yuen，J. C. (1991). Effects of pinyin and script type on verbal

processing: Comparisons of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong experience.

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 14{A), 429-448.

Cheung, H., & Ng, L. (2003). Chinese reading development in some major Chinese

societies: An introduction. In C. McBride-Chang & H.-C. Chen (Eds.), Reading

development in Chinese children (pp. 3-17). Westport, CT: Praeger Press.

Cheung, P. S. P., Lee, K. Y. S.，& Lee，L. W. T. (1997). The development of the

'Cantonese Receptive Vocabulary Test' for children aged 2-6 in Hong Kong.

European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 32, 127-138.

Chiappe, P., Chiappe, D. L., & Gottardo, A. (2004). Vocabulary, context, and speech

perception among good and poor readers, Educational Psychology, 24(6),

825-843.

Chow, B. W.-Y., & McBride-Chang，C. (2003). Promoting language and literacy


development through parent-child reading in Hong Kong preschoolers. Early

Education ami Development, 14{2), 233-248.

Chow, B. W.-Y, McBride-Chang, C.’ & Burgess, S. (2005). Phonological processing

skills and early reading abilities in Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners learning

to read English as a second language. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97(1),

81-87.

Clay, M. M. (1979). The early detection of reading difficulties: A diagnostic survey

ed.). Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate: The construction of inner control

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. San Diego,

CA: Academic Press.

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences ed.).

New York: Academic Press.

Crain-Thoreson, C.’ & Dale, P. S. (1999). Enhancing linguistic performance: Parents

and teachers as book reading partners for children with language delays. Topics

Early Childhood Special Education. 19, 28-39.

Cunningham, A. E. (1990). Explicit versus implicit instruction in phonemic

awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 429-444.

Dale, P. S., Crain-Thoreson, C.’ & Robinson, N. M. (1995). Linguistic precocity and

the development of reading: The role of extralinguistic factors. Applied

Psycholi 丨 igiiistics, 16{2), 173-187.

De Temple, J., & Snow，C. E. (2003). Learning words form books. In A. van Kleeck,

S. A. Stahl, & Bauer, E. B. (Eds.), On reading books to children: Parents and


teachers (pp. 16-36). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dunn, L. M., & Dunn，L. M. (1997). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - 3'^ Edition.

Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.

Elley, W. B. (1989). Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories. Reading

Research Quarterly, 24, 175-187.

Fey, M. E.’ Cleave, P. L., Ravida, A. I., Long, S. H.，Dejmal, A. E., & Eastern, D. L.

(1994). Effects of grammar facilitation on the phonological performance of

children with speech and language impairments. Journal of Speech and

Hearing Research, 37, 594-607.

Fletcher, K. L., & Reese, E. (2005). Picture book reading with young children: A

conceptual framework. Developmental Review, 25(1), 64-103.

Flood, J. E. (1977). Parental styles in reading episodes with young children. The

Reading Teacher, 30, 864-867.

Fu, C.-L., & Huang, H.-S. (2000). The effects of metalinguistic awareness training of

the low-achievers at elementary schools. Chinese Journal of Psychology, 42(1),

101-112.

Fu, G . S. (1987). The Hong Kong bilingual. In R. Lord & N. L. Cheng (Eds.),

Language education in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.

Fung, P. C.’ Chow, B. W.-Y., & McBride-Chang, C. (2005). The impact of a dialogic

reading program on deaf and hard-of-hearing kindergarten and early primary

school-aged students in Hong Kong. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf

Education, 10{\\ 82-95

Hargrave, A. C.’ & Senechal (2000). A book reading intervention with preschool

children who have limited vocabularies: The benefits of regular reading and


dialogic reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 75(1), 75-90.

Harkins, D. A., Koch, P. E., & Michel，G. F. (1994). Listening to maternal story

telling affects narrative skill of 5-year-old children. The Journal of Genetic

Psychology, 155’ 247-257.

Ho, C. S.-H., & Bryant, P. (1997). Phonological skills are important in learning to

read Chinese. Developmental Psychology, 33, 946-951.

Ho, C. S.-H., Chan, D. W.-O.，Tsang, S. M.’ & Lee，L. H. (2000). The Hong Kong

Test of Specific Learning Disabilities in Reading and Writing (HKT-SpLD).

Hong Kong, China: Chinese University of Hong Kong and Education

Department, HKSAR Government.

Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1991). Mother-child conversation in different social classes and

communicative settings. Child Development, (52(4), 782-796.

Hong Kong Department of Education. (1990). Syllabus for Chinese language

(primary 1 - 6). Hong Kong: Curriculum Development Institute, Hong Kong

Department of Education.

Hoosain, R. (1991). Psycholinguistic implications for linguistic relativity: A case

study of Chinese. Hillsdale, HJ: Erlbaum.

Huang, H.-S.，& Hanley, J. R. (1997). A longitudinal study of phonological

awareness, visual skills and Chinese reading acquisition among first graders in

Taiwan. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 20(2), 249-268.

Huebner, C. E. (2000). Promoting toddlers language development through

community-based intervention. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology,

27(5), 513-535

Justice, L. M.’ & Ezell, H. K. (2000). Stimulating children's emergent literacy skills


through home-based parent intervention. American Journal of

Speech-Language Pathology, 9, 257-268.

Kerr, B. M., & Mason，J. M. (1994). Awakening literacy through interactive story

reading. In Lehr, F. & Osbom，J. (Eds.), Reading, language, and literacy:

Instruction for the twenty-first century. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates.

Ku，Y. M., & Anderson, R. C. (2003) Development of morphological awareness in

Chinese and English. Reading and Writing, 16 (5): 399-422

Lau, J. Y. H.’ & McBride-Chang，C. (2005). Home Literacy and Chinese Reading in

Hong Kong Children. Early Education and Development, 7(5(1), 5-22.

Li, H.，& Rao，N. (2000). Parental influences on Chinese literacy development: A

comparison of preschoolers in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(1), 82-90.

Li, W., Anderson, R. C., Nagy, W., & Zhang，H. (2002). Facets of metalinguistic

awareness that contribute to Chinese literacy. In W. Li, J. S. Gaffhey, & J. L.

Packard (Eds.), Chinese children's reading acquisition: Theoretical and

pedagogical issues. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Lim, Y. S. (1999). Facilitating young Korean children's language development

through parent training picture book interaction. Unpublished dissertation,

University of Washington, Seattle.

Lonigan, C. J. (1994). Reading to preschoolers exposed: Is the emperor really naked?

Developmental Review, 14{2>\ 303-323.

Lonigan, C. J., Burgess, S. R.，& Anthony, J. L. (2000). Development of emergent

literacy and early reading skills in preschool children: Evidence from a


latent-variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 36(5), 596-613.

Lyytinen, P., Laakso, M. L.，& Poikkeus，A. M. (1998). Parental contribution to

child's early language and interest in books. European Journal of Psychology

of Education, 7i(3), 297-308.

Mason, J. M.’ & Stewart, J. P. (1990). Emergent literacy assessment for instructional

use in kindergarten. In L. M. Morrow & J. K. Smith (Eds.), Assessment for

instruction in early literacy (pp.155-175). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Mason, J. M.，Kerr, B. M.，Sinha, S., & McCormick, C. (1990). Shared book reading

in an early start program for at-risk children. Urbana-Champaign: University

of Illinois. Center for the Study of Reading.

McBride-Chang, C. (2004). Children s literacy development. London: Arnold.

McBride-Chang, C.’ & Ho, C. S.-H. (2000). Developmental issues in Chinese

children's character acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 50-55.

McBride-Chang, C.，Bialystok, E.，Chong, K. K. Y.，& Li，Y. (2004). Levels of

phonological awareness in three cultures. Journal of Experimental Child

Psychology, 59(2), 93-111.

McBride-Chang, C.，Cheung, H.’ Chow, B. W.-Y., Chow, C. S.-L., & Choi. L. (under

review). Metalinguistic skills and vocabulary Knowledge in Chinese (LI) and

English (L2).

McBride-Chang, C , Shu, H.，Zhou, A., Wat, C. P., & Wagner, R. K. (2003).

Morphological awareness uniquely predicts young children's Chinese character

recognition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 743-751.

McBride-Chang, C.，Tardif，T., Shu, H.，Fletcher, P., Stokes, S. R, Wong, A., Leung,

K. W. (under review). The role of morphological awareness in early vocabulary


and literacy development in Chinese: A Longitudinal Study

Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1999). Metalinguistic awareness and literacy

acquisition in different languages. In D. A. Wagner, R. L. Venetzky, & B. Street

(Eds.), Literacy: An international handbook (pp. 155-160). Boulder, CO:

Westview Press.

Nagy, W. E.’ & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B.

Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.)，Handbook of reading research

(Vol.3, pp.269-284). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Nagy, W.E., Kwo-Kealoha, A., Wu, X.’ Li, W.，Anderson, R. C.，& Chen，X. (2002).

The role of morphological awareness in learning to read Chinese. In W. Li, J. S.

Gaffney, & J. L. Packard (Eds.), Chinese children's reading acquisition.

London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Ninio, A., & Bruner, J. (1978). The achievement and antecedents of labeling. Journal

of Child Language, 5(1), 1-15.

Opper, S. (1996). Hong Kong's young children: Their early development and

learning. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Oritz, C., Stowe, R. M., & Arnold，D. H. (2001). Parental influence on child interest

in shared picture book reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 16,

263-281.

Packard, J. L. (2002). Metalinguistic awareness as a critical construct. In W. Li, J. S.

Gaffney, & J. L. Packard (Eds.), Chinese children's reading acquisition:

Theoretical and pedagogical issues (pp. 107-111). London: Kluwer Academic

Publishers.

Payne, A. C., Whitehurst, G J., & Angell, A. L. (1994). The role of home literacy


environment in the development of language ability in preschool children from

low-income families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 9, 427-440.

Perfetti, C. A., Beck, I., Bell, L.，& Hughes, C. (1987). Phonemic knowledge and

learning to read are reciprocal: A longitudinal study of first grade children.

Merrill Palmer Quarterly, Ji(3), 283-319.

Piramal, R. & Law，J. (2001). Evaluating a programme to enhance vocabulary

development in pre-schoolers. International Journal of Language and

Communication Disorder, i(5(Suppl), 212-221.

Raven, J. C., Court, J. H.，& Raven, J. (1995). Raven 's Coloured Progressive

Matrices. UK: Oxford Psychologists Press.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford University Press.

Roser, N.，& Martinez, M. (1985). Roles adults play in preschoolers' response to

literature. Language Arts, 62(5), 485-490.

Sandra, D. (1994). The morphology of the mental lexicon: Internal word structure

viewed from a psycholinguistic perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes,

9, 227-269.

Scarborough, H. S•，& Dobrich，W. (1994). On the efficacy of reading to

preschoolers. Developmental Review, 14, 245-302.

Scarborough, H. S•，Dobrich, W., & Hager’ M. (1991). Preschool literacy experience

and later reading achievement. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 508-511.

Sedlmeier, P., & Gigerenzer, G. (1989). Do studies of statistical power have an effect

on the power of studies? Psychological Bulletin, 105, 309-316.

Senechal, M. (1997). The differential effect of storybook reading on preschoolers'

acquisition of expressive and receptive vocabulary. Journal of Child Language,


24, 123-138.

Senechal, M.’ LeFevre, J. A., Thomas, E. M., & Daley, K. E. (1998). Differential

effects of home literacy experiences on the development of oral and written

language. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), 96-116.

Senechal, M.，LeFevre, J.-A., Smith-Chant, B. L.，& Colton，K. V. (2001). On

refining theoretical models of emergent literacy: The role of empirical evidence.

Journal of School Psychology, 5P(5), 439-460.

Senechal, M.’ Thomas, E., & Monker, J. (1995). Individual differences in 4-year-old

children's acquisition of vocabulary during storybook reading. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 57(2), 218-229.

Shu, H., & Anderson, R. (1997). Role of radical awareness in the character and word

acquisition of Chinese children. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 78-89.

Siok, W. T.，& Fletcher, P. (2001). The role of phonological awareness and

visual-orthographic Skills in Chinese reading acquisition. Developmental

Psychology, 57(6), 886-899.

Snow, C. E. (1983). Literacy and language: Relationships during the preschool years.

Harvard Educational Review, 53(2), 165-189.

Snow, C. E.’ Bums, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading

difficulties in young children. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Sorsby, A. J.，& Martlew, M. (1991). Representational demands in mothers' talk to

preschool children in two contexts: Picture book reading and a modelling task.

Journal of Child Language, 18(1), 373-395

Thomdike, R. L.’ Hagen, E. P., & Sattler, J. M. (1986). Stanford-Binet Intelligence

Scale (4出 eel). Chicago: Riverside.


Torgesen, J. K.，Morgan, S.，& Davis, C. (1992). The effects of two types of

phonological awareness training on word learning in kindergarten children.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 364-370.

Valdez-Menchaca, M. C.，& Whitehurst, G. J. (1992). Accelerating language

development through picture-book reading: A systematic extension to Mexican

day care. Developmental Psychology, 28, 1106-1114.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge: Harvard.

Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K.，& Rashotte，C. A. (1994). Development of

reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of

bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental

Psychology, 50(1), 73-87.

Wasik, B. A., & Bond，M. A. (2001). Beyond the pages of a book: Interactive book

reading and language development in preschool classrooms. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 93(2), 243-250.

Wells, G. (1985). Language development in the preschool years. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy.

Child Development, 69, 848-872.

Whitehurst, G. J., Arnold, D. S., Epstein, J. N., Angell, A. L.，Smith, M., & Fischel, J.

E. (1994). A picture book reading intervention in day care and home for

children from low-income families. Developmental Psychology, 30, 679-689.

Whitehurst, G J., Epstein, J. N.’ Angell, A. L., Payne, A. C.’ Crone, D. A., & Fischel，

J. E. (1994). Outcomes of an emergent literacy intervention in Head Start.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 542-555.


Whitehurst, G. J., Falco, F. L.’ Lonigan, C.，Fischel, J. E.，DeBaryshe, B. D.，

Valdez-Menchaca, M. C., & Caulfield，M. (1988). Accelerating language

development through picture-book reading. Developmental Psychology, 24,

552-558.

Whitehurst, G. J., Zevenbergen, A. A., Crone, D. A., Schultz, M. D.’ Veiling, O. N, &

Fischel, J. E. (1999). Outcomes of an emergent literacy intervention from Head

Start through second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 261-272.

Wood, C. (2002). Parent-child preschool activities can affect the development of

literacy skills. Journal of Research in Reading, 25(3), 241-258.

Zevenbergen, A. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2003). Dialogic reading: A shared picture

book reading intervention for preschoolers. In A. van Kleeck, S. A. Stahl, &

Bauer, E. B. (Eds.), On reading books to children: Parents and teachers. New

Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Zhuang, Z.Y. ( 2 0 0 0 ) .香港小學課本用字規範 ( X i a n g g a n g x i a o xue ke benyongzi

guifan). HKSAR: Joint Publishing.


Appendices

A. Children's questionnaire on reading

B. Storybook identification task

C. Demographic questionnaire

D. Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading condition

E. Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading with morphology condition

F. Titles of storybooks

G. Dialogic reading guideline

H. Dialogic reading bookmark

I. Morphology training guideline

J. Sample items of morphological construction training

K. Sample items of homophone training

I


Appendix A Children's Questionnaire on Reading

向小孩展示四個不同臉部表情的圖’問他那一個表情是開心和唔開心’以及確定

小孩知道每一個表情的開心程度，然後問他以下問題，叫他指出那一個表情最能

代表他：

© © © ©

T 你鐘唔鐘意梯書架？你睹書個陣時個樣係點 1 2 3 4 架？

~2. 媽°米有無帶過你去圖書館呀？你去圖書餘既時1 2 3 4 候個樣係點架？

3. 你睹書。力唔功架？ n甘個樣係點架？ 1 2 3 4 n/a

老師有無講故仔俾你聽架？老師講故仔俾你聽1 2 3 4 既時候你個樣係點架？

T 媽媽有無講故仔俾你聽架？媽媽講故仔俾仔聽1 2 3 4 既時候你個樣係點架？

6. 你有無哥哥姐姐架？佢地有無講故仔俾你聽1 2 3 4 n/a 架？佢地講故仔俾你聽既時候你個樣係點架？


Appendix B

Storybook identification

— . ^ — . . ^ , 圓丨 • . . . . —— . - • .. - - • -•• —

圓 /B 我不會飛lb ； )

__I攀明關 > 舟怪應 1 ， ^ 卜 L 誰

醒亜圏_ ！土土缺驻不 1 ⑷一 j 1 5 ) ' M p H i i i B ^ ^ H ' l 16) msmrn^m^^^rn

•I國 _ _ 口）； ‘ “ ‘^ ： ISO . ！ 20)

涵卿施_ i … — . . f - . . . 1 — — —

i 1 小场壤 _ ！吸呀!呀！ 1| ^ 叫I小熊採果子I I i S g t i ^ I m ^ ^ H B I a O k ^ J I • H i I 1 咽 ^ ^ b 8 k


Appendix C Demographic questionnaire

香港中文大學親子閱讀研究

家庭背景問卷

孩子姓名：

性別： • 男 • 女

出生曰期：年月日

現在就讀於：幼稚園

住宅電話：

日間聯絡電話：夜間聯絡電話：

1 .母親受教育的情况：

• 小學 • 中學 • 預科 • 大專 / 大學 • 研究生

2 .母親的職業：

3 .父親受教育的情况：

• 小學 • 中學 • 預科 • 大專 / 大學 • 研究生

4 .父親的職業：

5 .家庭每月收入：

• <$5，000 • $5，000-9, 999 • $10, 000-19, 999 • $20，000-39，999 • $40, 000-59, 999 • $60，000 或以上

6 .你的孩子目前共有多少本兒童書籍？

• 沒有

• 不超過 1 0 本

• 10-29 本

• 30-49 本

• 超過 5 0 本


7 .你平均與孩子閱讀兒童書籍多少次？

• 沒有

•每年不超過 1 0次

• 每月 1 次

• 每星期 1 次

• 每星期多於 1 次

8. 你和你的配偶每天大約花多少時間看書，報紙或雜紘？

• 沒有

• 0-14分鐘

• 15-29分鐘

• 30-59分鐘

• 1-2小時

• 2小時以上

謝謝！


Appendix D Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading condition


意見問卷

學生姓名：


班別：

請您按實際情况圈出適用答案，謝謝！

1 .在這十二星期裡，除了與孩子閱讀本研究的十二本故事書外，您有與孩

子閱讀其他故事書嗎？

有沒有（請跳至第 3題）

2 .與孩子閱讀這些故事書時，您有沒有以對話式方法閱讀？

有沒有

3 .您喜歡這種對話式閱讀方法嗎？

喜歡不喜歡沒有意見

因為：

4 .如閣下對是次研究有任何意見，敬請填寫：

- 完 -

謝謝閣下之寶貴意見


Appendix E Follow-up questionnaire for the dialogic reading with morphology condition


意見問卷

學生姓名：


班別：

請您按實際情况圈出適用答案，謝謝！

1 .在這十二星期裡，除了與孩子閱讀本研究的十二本故事書外，您有與孩

子閱讀其他故事書嗎？

有沒有（請跳至第 3題）

2 .與孩子閱讀這些故事書時，您有沒有以對話式方法閱讀？

有沒有

3 .您喜歡這種對話式閱讀方法嗎？


因為：

4 .您喜歡這種詞素意識訓練嗎？


因為：

5. 如閣下對是次研究有任何意見，敬請填寫：

- 完 -

謝謝閣下之寶貴意見


Appendix F Titles of storybooks

Publisher: 北京師范大學音像出版社

Title o f the s e r i e s : 迪科实陽「分享閱讀」系列讀本

Titles o f the storybooks:

1 .小熊採果子

2 .拔蘿萄

3 .小鴨和小雞

4 .小猪買麵包

5 .小羊找媽媽

6 .找朋友

7 .神奇的樹

8 .烏龜撒種子

9 .插缺

10. 誰先來的

1 1 . 我不會飛

1 2 . 小媽蟻


Appendix G Dialogic reading guideline

II r

叙共 + 明连 i 匕這 i i

香港中文大學親子閱讀硏究


鳙 _ _ ?

對話式閱讀是美國心理學家Whitehurst教授於一九八八年發掘的一種親子

閱讀方法。對話式閱讀是一個包含特別技巧的親子閱讀，其背後理念在改變於

傳統閱讀中父母和孩子的角色，使孩子成爲主要的講故事者，而父母則是主動

的耳令聽者，擔當引導和協助的角色。在對話式閱讀中，親子的相互交流是非

常重要的。

心理學家與教育學者於這近二十年間進行了多項有關對話式閱讀的硏究，

而研究結果顯示了對話式閱讀對兒童語言發展的有效性。硏究發現，經過四至

七星期的對話式閱讀’兒童的語言發展年齡比其他兒童快3.3至8.5個月’而效

果於測試一年後仍然顯著。以對話式閱讀技巧與兒童閱讀愈多，兒童的語言能

力進步得愈快。由於對話式閱讀對兒童語言發展的成效顯著，香港中文大學心

理學系McBiide-Chang教授於二零零三年硏究對話式閱讀對香港兒童發展的有效

性，並發現八星期的對話式閱讀能有效地速進兒童的語言發展。

• • �


對話式閱讀有何技巧？

對話式閱讀的基本閱讀技巧可以 _代表：

Prompt - 家長激發孩子說一些有關故事內容的東西

Evaluate - 家長評估孩子的回應

Expand - 家長以改述句子和加插資料在句子當中來擴展孩子的回應

Repeat - 家長鼓勵孩子重覆之前的句子

首先，家長以問題激發孩子說一些有關故事內容的東西（&ompO 0讓孩子

回答後，家長對孩子的回應作出評估（Evaluate)，並以改述句子和加插資料在句

子當中來擴展孩子的回應（Expand)�接著，家長鼓勵孩子重覆之前的句子來肯定

孩子明白（Repeat)�


J a ^ 如何激發孩子說話？

^ ^ f ： ^以下是五項激發孩子說話的技巧（ p r o m p t s ) ’可以用CROWD

字代表：

Completion prompts (塡充問題）：塡充問題

•在句子尾端留下塡充位置，讓孩子塡上答案。

•例如：熊寶寶的籃子是—的。讓孩子塡上“空”。

Recall prompts (回想問題）：一些有關故事內容的問題

•讓孩子敘述剛才看過的故事內容。

•例如：熊爸爸和熊媽媽沒看到熊寶寶的時候，熊寶寶到哪裡去了？

•回想問題不單能可用於故事結尾，若孩子已看過該故事，回想問題亦可用

於故事開首或中段。

Open-ended prompts (開放式問題）：鼓勵孩子用自己的字句回應故事內容的問題

•以問題弓丨導孩子用自己的字句回應故事內容。

•例如：你猜熊寶寶到哪裡去了？

現在請你告訴我這頁發生了甚麼事。

你看熊爸爸的樣子，你認爲他的心情怎麼樣？


Wh- prompts (wh-問句）：包含甚麼(what) ’那裏(where) ’何時（when) ’ 爲甚麼

( w h y )和怎樣（h o w )的問題

•例如：熊爸爸、熊媽媽和熊寶寶到森林裡做甚麼？

Distancing prompts (融入生活體驗的問題）：把日常生活與故事內容聯繫的問題

•幫助孩子把身邊事物和日常生活與故事內容聯繁起來

•例如：你試過跟爸爸媽媽在街上走失嗎？

如果走失了你會怎樣做？ ^ ^

對話式閱讀程序

1.每星期以對話式閱讀與孩子閱讀兩次或以上，每次不少於二十分鐘。

2.請以激發孩子說話的技巧CROWD激發孩子說話，並以PEER程序弓丨導和協

助孩子成爲主要的講故事者。故事書裡每頁也貼上了激發孩子說話技巧的示

範問題，家長可以這些示範問題引發孩子說話，亦可以運用以上五種激發孩

子說話的技巧設計問題，與孩子作對話式閱讀。

3.閱讀後，請在閱讀護照上塡上書名及閱讀時間，並妥爲保存。完成十二星期

之親子閱讀後，請把閱讀護照交回學校。


注意事項

應該

1.製造和保持融洽和有趣的閱讀氣氛。

2.鼓勵並讚賞孩子的嘗試（例如：你做得很好!）。

3.當孩子不懂回答問題時，家長應該盡量協助其孩子回答。

4.若孩子仍然不能回答，家長可代孩子回答，並且視此爲一個良好的教育機會。

(例如：這是一隻小猴子，你可否跟我說“小猴子” ？）

5.若孩子的回應是錯誤的，家長應對他的嘗試表現欣賞，並且鼓勵和協助他繼

續嘗試。

( e . g .很好！但你再想一想• • •）

6.多問一些較有發揮性的問題。

m 不應該 U J i ^ ^ 1.只問對與錯的問題

2.只顧著說故事而忽略了孩子回應

3.說一些可能會傷害孩子的說話（例如：你真蠢！這條問題也不懂回答丨）


對話式閱讀參考例子 ^ ^ r ^

瀬：

家長：（指著封面）你猜猜這個是關於甚麼的故事？ - ‘ 、？ J 孩子：這隻是小熊。小熊的故事。 ” / /

家長：很好。這是一個關於小熊採果子的故事。讓我們看看有甚麼事發生在小

熊身上，好嗎？

孩子：好。

P.1 家長：熊爸爸、熊媽媽和熊寶寶到森林裡做甚麼？ (Wh-問句）

孩子：採果子。

家長：對。（評估）

他們到森林裡採果子。（擴展）

你可以跟我讀一次嗎？（重覆）

孩子：他們到森林裡採果子。

家長：很好。

p.2

家長：熊爸爸把果子放進大號籃子裏。熊媽媽把果子放進中號籃子裏。熊寶寶

把果子放進小號籃子裏。

誰用大號籃子？（Wh-問句）

孩子：熊爸爸。

家長：誰用中號籃子？（Wh-問句）

孩子：熊媽媽。

家長：誰用小號籃子？（Wh-問句）

孩子：熊寶寶。


熊爸爸、熊媽媽和熊寶寶分別用大號籃子，中號籃子和小號籃子。（擴

展）


孩子：熊爸爸、熊媽媽和熊寶寶分別用大號籃子’中號籃子和小號籃子。

家長：做得很好。籃子是用來做甚麼的？（Wh-問句）

孩子：籃子…我不知道…

家長：不要緊。你試想想家裡有沒有籃子？

孩子：有。

家長：那麼家裡的籃子放了甚麼？（Wh-問句）

孩子：放了水果。


籃子是用來放了水果的。

家長：很好。（評估）

我們可以用籃子放水果。我們亦可以用籃子來盛其他東西。（擴展）

P.3

家長：你看看熊寶寶在做甚麼？（Wh-問句）

孩子：熊寶寶在玩耍。

家長：熊寶寶可能想在森林裡玩耍，但是你看看熊寶寶正在把東西放進口

裡，你知道他把甚麼東西放進口裡嗎？（評估：孩子的答案錯誤時）

孩子：果子。


熊寶寶坐在地上吃果子。（擴展）


孩子：熊寶寶坐在地上吃果子。

家長：非常好。（評估）

他的爸爸媽媽又在做甚麼？（Wh-問句）

孩子：他的爸爸媽媽在採果子。


熊爸爸和熊媽媽在森林裡採果子。（擴展）

你跟我讀一次，好嗎？（重覆）


孩子：熊爸爸和熊媽媽在森林裡採果子。

家長：很好。

P.4 家長：一會兒’熊爸爸問熊媽媽：「熊寶寶在哪裏呢？怎麼沒看到他？」

你猜熊寶寶到哪裡去了？(開放式問題）

孩子：他去了遊樂場玩耍。

家長：爲甚麼你猜他去了遊樂場玩耍？ (Wh-問句）

孩子 :因爲他喜歡去遊樂場。

家長：好。讓我們一起看看他去了哪裡。

P.5 家長：現在請你告訴我這頁發生了甚麼事。（開放式問題）

孩子：熊媽媽不知道熊寶寶在那裡。


那麼，熊媽媽以爲熊寶寶跟誰在一塊兒？（Wh-問句）

孩子：熊爸爸。



熊媽媽以爲熊寶寶跟熊爸爸在一塊兒。（擴展）


孩子：熊媽媽以爲熊寶寶跟熊爸爸在一塊兒。

家長：你看熊爸爸的樣子，你認爲他的心情怎麼樣？(開放式問題）

孩子：他很害怕。

家長：熊爸爸不知道熊寶寶在那裡，他感到很擔心和害怕。

(擴展）

你跟我讀一次’好嗎？（重覆）

孩子：熊爸爸不知道熊寶寶在那裡，他感到很擔心和害怕。

家長：做得很好。

p.6

家長：熊爸爸和熊媽媽發現熊寶寶走丟了，就大聲喊：「小寶寶，你在哪兒？

快出來啊！」

你試過跟爸爸媽媽在街上走失嗎？（融入生活體驗的問題）

孩子：沒有。

家長：如果走失了你會怎樣做？（融入生活體驗的問題）

孩子：找警察叔叔。


如果走失了，記著不要亂跑，看見警察叔叔或姨姨便請他們幫忙。(擴

展）

P.7

家長：小熊聽到後趕緊回答：「爸爸、媽媽，我在這兒呢！」

你看看熊寶寶的籃子裡還剩下多少果子？（Wh-問句）

孩子：沒有。


寶寶的籃子裡沒有果子。（擴展）

P.8

家長：熊爸爸看到小熊的籃子裏空空的，就問它：「你採的果子呢？」

熊寶寶的籃子是—的。（塡充問題）

孩子：空。

家長：正確 ° (評估）

熊寶寶的籃子是空的。（擴展）


孩子：熊寶寶的籃子是空的。


家長：很好。你猜熊寶寶採的果子到哪裡去了？（開放式問題）

孩子：他的肚子。

家長：讓我們看看果子是不是到了他的肚子裡。

孩子：好。

P.9 家長：小熊指着自己的肚子說：「全在這兒呢！」

你看看小熊的肚子和平時有甚麼不同？（Wh-問句）

孩子：比平時大了很多。


小熊的肚子比平時大了很多。（擴展）

爲甚麼他的肚子會這樣呢？（Wh-問句）

孩子：因爲吃了果子。


他吃了很多果子，肚子裡全是果子。（擴展）


孩子：他吃了很多果子，肚子裡全是果子。

家長：非常好。

熊爸爸和熊媽媽沒看到熊寶寶的時候，熊寶寶到哪裡去了？(回想問題）

孩子：熊寶寶去了吃果子。


熊寶寶獨自坐在一旁吃果子。（擴展）

你跟我讀一次，好嗎？（重覆）

孩子：熊寶寶獨自坐在一旁吃果子。

家長：非常好。

%


麵

‘香港中文大學親子閱讀硏究


Appendix H

Dialogic reading bookmark

^ m m m

基本閱 i f技巧 P E E R :

trompt --激發

Evaluate —評估

Expand -MM Repeat -重述孩

激發孩子說話

的技巧 C R O W D ：

Completion prompts 塡充問m

Recall prompts

‘想問m open-ended prompts (開放式問m Wh- prompts (wh-問甸

Distancing prompts TmA^fsmmmm

•發


Appendix I Morphology training guideline

崎



詞素意識

詞素是語文中最基本的意思單位。詞素意識是指兒童掌握與運用詞素的能

力。心理語言學的硏究顯示，詞素意識對兒童語文發展極爲重要。詞素意識較高

的兒童，其語文發展一般比其他同齡的兒童快。

詞素意識訓練教材

• 故事書 1

•同音字訓練手冊 /

•詞素造詞訓練手冊

與孩子讀完故事書後，請使用同音字訓練手冊和詞素造詞訓練手冊教導孩

子認識中文詞素。請家長每星期與孩子進行同音字和詞素造詞訓練至少各一次。


同音字訓練

同音字訓練目的在於讓孩子認識中文字有同音異意的特徵。例如：發，法

和髮的廣東話讀音均爲，但它們有不同的意思。

同音字訓練程序力

1.請翻開同音字訓練手冊

2.每頁之左上方顯示訓練題目相應的故事

書和頁數

3.請同時翻開該故事書之相應頁數

4.向孩子讀出包含同音字之詞語，並以圖畫說明這些字 ’

同音異意的特徵

例如：小羊找媽媽第3頁

(小主、太腸、海韵

對孩子說：「(指著書中圖畫）這是小主。(指著訓練手冊中的圖畫）這是太陽。

這是海逆。小主’太腸和海注的jeong4雖然讀音一樣，但是意思並不相同。

你看看，小至，太腸和海逹。」向孩子說明這些字的意思’讓孩子掌握這些

字同音異意的特徵。


5.請以印在每頁左下方的詞語來確定孩子能夠掌握同音

異意的槪念。

例如：例如：小羊找媽媽第3頁 ^ ^ ^ ^ ,

(小主•、• )

對孩子說：「羊毛的羊是哪個羊？」

讓孩子指出相應圖畫。

對孩子說：「陽光的陽是哪個陽？」

讓孩子指出相應圖畫。

若孩子不能指出正確答案，請向孩子加以說明。

"m

^jn

PARE

NT-C

HILD

REA

DING

IN TO

F HON

G K

ONG

BILI

NCUA

L CO

rflTX

I • •

小参

找媽

媽R

3 .

同音

字：

小J：

•太

M •

紐

粵話

拼音

：jo

eng4 讀

m

m

I -

‘ a>

艮

5

'

i I

I OQ

to

問題

：J：

毛.i

t光

I �

"3

"1

r g"

Co

pyri 乡

CtT

HK, iU

X r

i^

^ CTQ

5

. 5

' OQ

O

oo


詞素造詞訓練

詞素造詞訓練目的在於讓孩子認識中文詞語與詞素的關係。中文字包含音

節（即是讀音）和詞素（即是意思），而中文詞語由不同詞素組成。

例如：電 + 話 = 電話；電 + 腦 = 電腦。

詞素造詞訓練程序

1.請翻開詞素造詞訓練手冊 ®

2.每頁之左上方顯示訓練題目相應的故事書名和頁數

3.請同時翻開該故事書之相應頁數

4.向孩子解釋詞語的意思

例如：拔蘿萄第5頁

對孩子說：「(指著書中圖畫）一個很大很大的蘿蔔，我們會稱它爲蘿蔔王。(指

著訓練手冊中的圖畫）一個很大很大的西瓜，我們會稱它爲西瓜王。」向孩

子說明這些詞語的意思，讓孩子掌握中文詞語是由不同詞素組成的特徵。

5.對孩子說：「一個很大很大的雪糕，我們會稱它爲甚麼？」讓孩子運用詞素意

識來造詞。

6.訓練題目的編號印在每頁之右上方。請翻到訓練手冊的答案頁，並按題目編

號找出答案。（答案：雪糕王）

PA

REN

T C

HIL

D R

EA

DLN

G I

N T

HE H

ON

G K

ON

G B

ILIN

GU

AL C

ON

TIX

I

V'

•遂，法項)！

卞纳极子

HHi*免

•

•

拔li

fi :

p.5

r 1

1)一

個很

大很

大的

趁菊

•我

們會

稱它

為&资

王•

i i

爆

i i ^

1

1

I 1

I “

！ 2

) 一

個很

大很

大的

西恭

，我

們會

稱它

3)

一個

很大

很大

的容

糕，

我們

會稱

它為

甚麼

？ i

S

！

I ！

i I

3

-1

r-

I Co

pynghi 场

by

CUHK

. All r

iJstf

reirvw

d. g-

OQ

E.

era

o


气 / 、



Appendix J

Sample items of morphological construction training

L) 一個很大很大的敏葡’我們會稱它為练葡笨。

U 例 # 11 2) — 個很大很大的西瓜 ’ 我們會稱它 3 ) —個很大很大的容樣’我們會稱它為甚麼？

-

1 ) 給人行的路，我們會稱它為 ‘

m #

— 2 ) 紛的路 ’ 我們會稱它其杆車路 • 3)給德行的路，我們會稱它為甚麼？


Appendix K Sample items of homophone training

-h^a i fe i f e P.3

同音字:小差•太•海进

粵話拼音：joeng4

一剛国問題：差毛•歯光

P.4

同青字：大•玩:& •恐置

粵访拼音：8;eoi6

曼圓問趣：里人•工A

• . • ‘ ； • ‘ ‘

• ： • .

, • • . ； ‘ • . , “ ( ‘ . . . ,

CUHK L i b r a r i e s

0 0 4 2 7 9 2 1 8

Enhancing Children's Reading Ability and Vocabulary Growth

Documents

Transcript of Enhancing Children's Reading Ability and Vocabulary Growth