Developmental Psychology Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association

2008, Vol. 44, No. 1, 233–244 0012-1649/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.1.233

Dialogic Reading and Morphology Training in Chinese Children: Effects

on Language and Literacy

Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow, Catherine McBride-Chang, Him Cheung, and Celia Sze-Lok Chow
Chinese University of Hong Kong

This study investigates the effects of parent– child shared book reading and metalinguistic training on the
language and literacy skills of 148 kindergartners in Hong Kong. Children were pretested on Chinese character
recognition, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and reading interest and then assigned randomly to 1 of 4
conditions: the dialogic reading with morphology training (DR ⫹ MT), dialogic reading (DR), typical reading,
or control condition. After a 12-week intervention period, the DR intervention yielded greater gains in
vocabulary, and the DR ⫹ MT intervention yielded greater improvement in character recognition and
morphological awareness. Both interventions enhanced children’s reading interest. Results confirm that
different home literacy approaches influence children’s oral and written language skills differently: Shared
book reading promotes language development, whereas parents’ explicit metalinguistic training within a
shared book reading context better prepares children for learning to read.

Keywords: dialogic reading, morphological training, vocabulary, character recognition

The developmental trajectories associated with different com- Parent–Child Reading and Interaction
ponents of literacy and oral language are overlapping yet distin-
Parent– child reading provides opportunities for children to learn
guishable (Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000; Sénéchal, Le-
new words that they may not encounter in daily life and to acquire
Fevre, Smith-Chant, & Colton, 2001). For example, types of
knowledge about conventions of print and the syntactic structure
parent– child interaction exert differential effects on children’s
of language (Wasik & Bond, 2001). The impact of parent– child
literacy and language skills. Specifically, children’s reading skills
reading experience on children’s concurrent and subsequent lan-
have been linked to parental reports of explicit teaching of print, guage abilities (e.g., Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995;
while vocabulary and listening comprehension have been linked to Crain-Thoreson & Dale, 1999; Justice & Ezell, 2000; Payne,
early exposure to books in past studies of alphabetic languages Whitehurst, & Angell, 1994; Wood, 2002) and interest in reading
(e.g., Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). The present study investigates (Lyytinen, Laakso, & Poikkeus, 1998; Scarborough & Dobrich,
how two forms of parental interaction, namely, dialogic reading 1994) has been well documented in Indo-European language fam-
(DR; shared parent– child oral communication through book read- ilies.
ing) and morphology training (MT; explicit teaching of morpho- Although simply reading the text may be of some interest to
logical skills) implemented through DR affect the acquisition of children, children are also provided with opportunities to use
Chinese language and literacy among preschoolers in Hong Kong. words actively through parent– child interactive conversations (De
Temple & Snow, 2003). Such participation is more stimulating for
children than is straight reading of the text (Sénéchal, Thomas, &
Monker, 1995). Also, verbal and affective interactions during
parent– child reading promote children’s positive views about and
Editor’s Note. Cynthia Garcia Coll served as action editor for this interest in reading (Baker, Mackler, Sonnenschein, & Serpell,
article.—CM-C 2001). For example, children whose parents had been trained to
use interactive reading strategies demonstrated increased interest
Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow, Catherine McBride-Chang, Him Cheung, and in shared book reading relative to children whose parents were not
Celia Sze-Lok Chow, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of trained to use such strategies (Ortiz, Stowe, & Arnold, 2001).
Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, China. However, this effect was based on a comparison between an
This research was partially supported by Quality Education Fund Grant intervention and a control condition only, and hence the indepen-
2003/0754 (to Catherine McBride-Chang, Him Cheung, & Bonnie Wing-
dent contributions of shared book reading and parental behaviors
Yin Chow) and Research Grants Council Grant 4257/03H (to Catherine
during reading were not separated.
McBride-Chang) from the Hong Kong government. We thank the students,
teachers, and headmaster of Hong Kong Ling Liang Church Kindergarten,
Ma On Shan Ling Liang Kindergarten, and Kau Yan School for their DR
participation in this study.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Catherine A specific technique of parent– child reading developed by
McBride-Chang, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Whitehurst and colleagues called dialogic reading (DR) involves
Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, China. E-mail: high levels of interaction between parents and children (White-
cmcbride@[Link] hurst et al., 1988). The method emphasizes the role of feedback

233
234 CHOW, MCBRIDE-CHANG, CHEUNG, AND CHOW

and scaffolded adult– child interactions in picture book reading acquisition (e.g., Ho & Bryant, 1997; McBride-Chang & Ho,
(Zevenbergen & Whitehurst, 2003). DR has been found to have a 2000). This is reinforced by a lack of grapheme–phoneme corre-
positive impact on children’s language skills, especially vocabu- spondence in written Chinese, which downplays the metalinguistic
lary, in alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages (e.g., Chow & prominence of phonemes. Therefore, reading Chinese generally
McBride-Chang, 2003; Hargrave & Sénéchal, 2000; Huebner, sensitizes the reader to syllables, represented as characters, in
2000; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992; Whitehurst, Arnold, much the same way as reading an alphabet sensitizes its readers to
et al., 1994). For example, Whitehurst et al. (1988) reported a phonemic segments, represented as letters (Chow, McBride-
6-month gain in expressive vocabulary and an 8.5-month gain in Chang, & Burgess, 2005; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). A
expressive language fluency in a group of 2-year-olds through a parallel argument applies to the meaning side: Because lexical
4-week DR program implemented at home, and these gains were morphemes are consistently represented as characters, one may
maintained at a 9-month follow-up assessment. DR has also been assume a strong association between Chinese reading and the
shown to be effective in enhancing the Chinese receptive vocab- reader’s awareness of the existence and functions of morphemes,
ulary development of hearing-impaired children in Hong Kong or morphological awareness.
(Fung, Chow, & McBride-Chang, 2005) and Korean children’s Morphological awareness is the awareness of and ability to
oral productive and receptive skills (Lim, 1999). manipulate the meaning structure of language (Carlisle, 1995). As
Despite strong evidence that DR enhances children’s oral lan- discussed, the one-to-one-to-one relations among Chinese charac-
guage skills, few studies have investigated the association between ters, syllables, and morphemes may promote a high degree of
DR and children’s literacy development. DR with preschoolers metalinguistic prominence pertaining to syllables and morphemes
was demonstrated to have a significant effect on children’s basic rather than to words. Hence the importance of syllabic and mor-
print knowledge (Whitehurst, Epstein, et al., 1994), and the posi- phological awareness in Chinese acquisition is underscored, with
tive effects on emergent literacy skills were maintained through some arguing that their role in Chinese acquisition is analogous to
the end of the kindergarten years (Whitehurst et al., 1999). How- that of phonemic awareness in English acquisition (Nagy &
ever, the intervention condition in these studies was a combination Anderson, 1999). Although previous work has highlighted the
of a DR program conducted both at home and in school and a importance of syllabic awareness (e.g., McBride-Chang & Ho,
classroom-based sound and letter awareness program called Sound 2000), the present study considers morphological awareness, fo-
Foundations. Therefore, the significant results in these studies cusing on two particular aspects of it, namely, morphological
could not be attributed solely to the DR method. Nevertheless, the compounding and homophony.
findings in these studies suggest that children might benefit both in Morphology provides useful aids for supporting the acquisition
oral language and literacy skills from DR if elements of linguistic and retention of polymorphemic words (Sandra, 1994). This ap-
instruction are added. plies particularly well to Chinese, which involves extensive lexical
compounding. For example, the word (/din6 si6/; television)
Metalinguistic Skills and Chinese Acquisition is composed of the morphemes (/din6/; electric) and (/si6/;
vision), and the word (/din6 nou5/; computer) is made up of
Different languages and scripts, with their respective idiosyn- (/din6/; electric) and (/nou5/; brain).1 Hence, meanings of
cratic characteristics, highlight the relative importance of different Chinese words can often be derived through simple morphological
metalinguistic skills in processing these languages and scripts. For analysis in the most straightforward fashion (Ku & Anderson,
instance, Chinese is a morphosyllabic language in which each 2003).
character, the primary unit of writing, represents both a syllable A large number of homophonic morphemes constitutes another
and a lexical morpheme. Hence, for example, a two-morpheme salient feature of Chinese morphology. For example, in the Can-
Chinese word is written as two characters and spoken as two tonese dialect, 4,500 regularly used characters map onto around
syllables. Note that in Chinese a lexical morpheme, expressed in 1,700 tonal syllables (Liu et al., 1975; Qian, Lee, & Soong, 2004).
speech as a syllable and in writing a character, is almost always Hence on average, nearly 3 regularly used characters, each repre-
itself a word, and that multimorphemic words are often constructed senting a distinct meaning, share 1 tonal syllable. The ability to
out of lexical morphemes through straightforward compounding. distinguish characters (morphemes) having identical pronuncia-
Hence, it is always possible to understand a word without realizing tions therefore becomes crucial in learning to read.
that it is a word rather than a combination of words. Such a Why might skills in lexical compounding and resolving ho-
morpheme focus, instead of a word focus, is reinforced by reading mophony facilitate Chinese word recognition? Most Chinese
experience: Printed Chinese words are not spatially marked; only words to be learned early are multimorphemic, underscoring the
characters, each of which occupies a fixed square space in print,
prominence of morphological awareness in early Chinese acquisi-
are. Approximately 4,500 characters are in regular use (Liu,
tion. This contrasts with beginning English reading, in which
Chuang, & Wang, 1975). The majority (about 80%) are ideopho-
multimorphemic words are learned relatively late (e.g., McBride-
netic compounds, each comprising a meaning component (seman-
Chang et al., 2005; Shu, McBride-Chang, Wu, & Liu, 2006). The
tic radical) and a pronunciation component (phonetic radical;
importance of combining morphemes in order to read a variety of
Hoosain, 1991). These components provide only rough and holis-
words implies that sensitivity to lexical compounding may facili-
tic cueing to character meaning and pronunciation, respectively.
Because the primary written unit (character) completely over-
laps with the basic pronunciation (syllable) and meaning unit 1
Cantonese is transcribed in the Romanization symbols standardized by
(lexical morpheme), syllabic awareness, instead of phonemic the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (in 1993). Numbers indicate lexical
awareness, becomes particularly important in Chinese reading tones.
 DIALOGIC READING AND MORPHOLOGY TRAINING 235

tate early word recognition. For example, in English, knowing the dren (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999). In the present study, the focus
morpheme house may help children read more difficult words such is on parents’ training of their children on metalinguistic skills
as household, funhouse, or houseboat. Knowing one morpheme through interactive reading rather than explicit teaching of print
within the word may help children read the entire word by making concepts as has been done in some previous studies (e.g., Sénéchal
use of their extensive oral knowledge and understanding of how et al., 1998; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). Furthermore, the present
morphemes can be combined in the native language. In addition, training is specifically about morphological awareness, a salient
distinguishing meanings of homophones might also help in map- feature of Chinese reading acquisition.
ping oral language onto words. For example, distinguishing wear
from where might help children learn to read words such as The Situation in Hong Kong
wearing, underwear, nowhere, or whereabouts, words sharing one
sound unit that represents different meanings. Both the processes Most children in Hong Kong start their formal schooling at 3
of lexical compounding and homophone distinction were associ- years of age, when they enter either a kindergarten or a child care
ated with word recognition in Chinese children in correlational center (Opper, 1996), where they begin to learn to read and write
studies (McBride-Chang, Shu, Zhou, Wat, & Wagner, 2003; Chinese characters (G. S. Fu, 1987; Li & Rao, 2000). The main-
McBride-Chang et al., 2005; Shu et al., 2006). Our focus on stream approach to early Chinese reading instruction relies heavily
training of lexical compounding and homophone identification on rote memorization, and children are encouraged to learn char-
was intended to probe the extent to which explicit metalinguistic acters as holistic units (H. Cheung & Ng, 2003). Also, children are
training in such skills might facilitate early word recognition in required to copy new characters several times to ensure that they
Chinese. can recognize and reproduce them (Chan & Wang, 2003). In
A number of training studies have reported associations between general, parents in Hong Kong have positive attitudes toward early
morphological awareness and reading ability. For example, Lyster literacy instruction and home literacy activities. Li and Rao (2000)
(2002) demonstrated that among Norwegian preschoolers, those found that 73% of the parents taught their children to read Chinese
who received training in word morphology had associated gains in characters at home, and 82.5% of them believed that parent– child
both morphological skills and reading, in addition to phonological reading was useful to develop their child’s Chinese literacy skills.
skills, in comparison with those in a control group. Similarly, in a Therefore, methods that provide guidance for parents to teach
study of 7- and 8-year-old English speakers, those who received 12 Chinese literacy at home and read effectively with their children
weeks of morphological training, focused on prefixes, suffixes, are needed.
and other derivations, had improved reading skills in comparison
with those in a control group (Nunes, Bryant, & Olsson, 2003). The Present Study
Beyond morphological interventions in alphabetic languages,
several studies have established the effects of MT on children’s The present study included four participant groups: the dialogic
word recognition ability (Nagy et al., 2002). For example, C.-L. Fu reading with morphology training (DR ⫹ MT), dialogic reading
and Huang (2000) conducted a study on the effects of MT focused alone (DR), typical reading (TR), and control groups. Demonstra-
on radical awareness, which is the sensitivity to semantic and tion of the unique effect of MT was made possible by this design.
phonetic cues provided by the radicals comprising Chinese char- There were three hypotheses. First, because past studies had found
acters, on Chinese character recognition ability in Taiwanese that typical parent– child reading was related most strongly to
second-grade lower achievers. C.-L. Fu and Huang found signif- children’s oral language development, it was expected that the TR
icant main effects of training on morphological awareness and condition would produce greater gains in vocabulary than would
greater intragroup improvement on the character recognition the control condition.
scores in the MT group than in the control group. Second, because of the importance of parent– child interaction
as shown in previous DR research, DR was expected to foster
Metalinguistic Training gains in vocabulary and interest in reading. Thus, children in the
DR and DR ⫹ MT conditions were hypothesized to demonstrate
Nevertheless, although studies have demonstrated positive ef- greater growth in vocabulary and interest in reading than children
fects of metalinguistic training on early reading acquisition (e.g., in the TR condition.
Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999), most of these studies featured Third, we hypothesized that children in the DR ⫹ MT condition
training by teachers or specially trained researchers rather than by would have larger gains in morphological awareness and, conse-
parents. Previous correlational research has demonstrated that pa- quently, in character recognition than their counterparts in the
rental reports about reading and writing with their children in other three conditions. This is because previous studies have
kindergarten were uniquely associated with these children’s read- shown a strong link between morphological awareness and Chi-
ing skills, both concurrently and longitudinally (Sénéchal & Le- nese reading. The exact mechanism underlying this relation has not
Fevre, 2002; Sénéchal, LeFevre, Thomas, & Daley, 1998). How- been formally modeled. One way to look at it is to regard mor-
ever, causal evidence of parents’ contribution to children’s oral phological awareness as one precondition for good reading, which
and literacy skills remains scant. In addition, for very young involves not only effective character–syllable mapping (achievable
children, training in metalinguistic skills alone, without an explicit by rote learning), but also a general awareness that characters
focus on print, may be useful for promoting reading acquisition. represent independent syllables and meanings that can be flexibly
For example, a meta-analysis demonstrated that phonological combined and recombined. Such an awareness is especially im-
awareness training itself, in the absence of print, facilitates written portant in normal reading and some test situations, in which
word recognition in alphabetic orthographies among young chil- characters are surrounded by other characters. Hence, good mor-
236 CHOW, MCBRIDE-CHANG, CHEUNG, AND CHOW

phological awareness might better prepare children for learning item. The maximum score of the vocabulary test was 60; Cron-
what syllables are associated with what characters, which is read- bach’s alpha was .75.
ing itself. Morphological awareness. Two tasks of morphological
awareness in the absence of print were administered at both pre-
and posttesting. These tasks were morpheme identification and
Method
morphological construction.
Participants The morpheme identification task consisted of 4 practice items
and 14 test items. For each item, four pictures were presented
One hundred fifty children in Hong Kong of normal intelligence simultaneously, and each of the four pictures was named out loud
in their 3rd kindergarten year were included. One child in the DR by the experimenter. The experimenter then said aloud a two-
condition and another in the control condition dropped out during syllable probe word containing the target morpheme; the child’s
the study, and thus our data were from a total of 148 children task was to select the one picture name, out of the four, sharing the
(attendance rate was 98.67%). Children ranged in age from 57 to same target morpheme as the probe. Of the four picture names, one
71 months with a mean age of 63.8 months. There were 91 male contained the target morpheme, two contained syllables homopho-
and 57 female participants. Parents of these children were nic with the target morpheme, and one was semantically related to
Cantonese-speaking and had completed at least a primary educa- the probe but shared no morpheme or syllable with it. For example,
tion. The average family income range per annum, in Hong Kong in one test trial, four pictures showing an envelope ( /seon3
(HK) dollars, was from HK$480,000 to HK$719,988 (approxi- fung1/), a petrol station ( /jau4 zaam6/), a post box (
mately $61,536 to $92,304 in U.S. dollars). Parents reported that /jau4 tung2/), and swimming ( /jau4 seoi2/) were presented.
on average the children owned between 30 and 49 storybooks and Children were asked to select the picture bearing a name that
they read books with their parents at least once a week. Parents’ shared the target morpheme (/jau4/) with the probe “stamp”
self-reported amount of reading time per day averaged around 15 ( /jau4 piu3/). The correct answer would be “post box”
to 29 min. ( /jau4 tung2/). Cronbach’s alpha for this 14-item task was
.50. Items with low reliability were then dropped to improve the
overall reliability of this task. Five items were finally selected, and
Measures
the Cronbach’s alpha for this 5-item task was .61.
Character recognition. A 61-item character recognition list The morphological construction task consisted of 2 practice
and 150 items adapted from the Hong Kong Test of Specific items and 20 test items. For each item, the experimenter orally
Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing (HKT-SpLD; Ho, described a novel object or concept; the child was to construct a
Chan, Tsang, & Lee, 2000) were combined and administered at novel word label to name the new object or concept. Pictures were
both pre- and posttesting. The items were arranged in order of used to illustrate the new objects or concepts for the 2 practice
increasing difficulty, and the children were required to read each items and the first 3 test items. One example is the following: “If
character aloud. Children were given the items adapted from the a spider makes a web, we call it a spider web ( /zi1 zyu1
HKT-SpLD if they progressed beyond the 61-item character rec- mong5/). What would we call a web that is made by an ant?” The
ognition list. Testing stopped when the child failed to read 15 answer is an ant web ( /maa5 ngai5 mong5/). Creation of
consecutive items. The maximum score of the combined task was the novel label “ant web” to name the new object (i.e., a web made
211; Cronbach’s alpha was .98. by an ant) thus required some understanding of the component
Vocabulary. The Cantonese receptive vocabulary test, admin- morphemes “ant” and “web,” and also how these morphemes
istered at both pre- and posttest, consisted of 30 items from the should be legally combined. The maximum score of this task was
Hong Kong Cantonese Receptive Vocabulary Test (P. S. P. 20, and its Cronbach’s alpha was .81.
Cheung, Lee, & Lee, 1997) and 30 additional items translated and Nonverbal IQ. The Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices
adapted from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Third Edition (RCPM; Raven, Court, & Raven, 1995) was used to measure
(PPVT–III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997). The original Hong Kong Can- children’s nonverbal IQ at pretesting only. In this study, only sets
tonese Receptive Vocabulary Test, consisting of 3 training and 65 A and B, with 24 items in total, were used. The maximum score of
test items, is modeled on the PPVT and developed for Cantonese- this task was 24, and its Cronbach’s alpha was .63.
speaking children from 2 to 6 years of age. This test, and the Reading interest. A six-item questionnaire was administered
Chinese translation of the PPVT–III as well, have been success- to assess children’s interest in reading at both pre- and posttesting.
fully used among children in Hong Kong in some previous studies The items of this questionnaire were adapted from a questionnaire
(Chow & McBride-Chang, 2003; Fung et al., 2005; McBride- measuring children’s interest in literacy-related episodes; these
Chang, Cheung, Chow, Chow, & Choi, 2006). The presently used have been successfully administered to kindergartners in Hong
60 vocabulary items had been selected through a pilot test from 90 Kong in previous research (Lau & McBride-Chang, 2005). Each of
initial items drawn from the two respective tests. From this initial the six items represented a reading-related episode. Items included
pool, 35 items were discarded because they produced over 95% of whether the child enjoyed reading storybooks with his or her (a)
correct responses. mother, (b) teachers, and (c) elder siblings; enjoyed reading books
To administer the vocabulary test, the experimenter read aloud on his or her own; enjoyed going to the library; and felt that he or
each item, and the child was to select a picture, from four options, she was competent in reading books. Children were shown a
to match it. The four optional pictures in each trial corresponded picture with four different faces being very unhappy, unhappy,
respectively to the target item, an item phonologically close to the happy, and very happy and then asked to differentiate those faces.
target, an item semantically close to the target, and an unrelated For each item, the experimenter read out the item, and the child
 DIALOGIC READING AND MORPHOLOGY TRAINING 237

was to select the face most appropriately describing her own added. A MT guideline, and morphological construction and ho-
degree of happiness in that particular reading-related episode. If mophone training books, were provided at the beginning of the
the question was not applicable to the child, a choice of “n/a” was program together with the DR materials. The MT guideline in-
provided. The total score was divided by the number of questions cludes information about the morphology in the Chinese language
applicable to the child, and this score was used for analysis. The and techniques to enhance children’s awareness of morphology.
maximum score of this task was 4; Cronbach’s alpha was .75. The MT in this study did not explicitly target teaching print.
Storybook identification. This task consisted of 24 pictures of Rather, it involved a focus on sound and meaning training. For
storybook cover pages, half of which were storybooks used in this parents to use the materials and technique used in DR to teach
study (targets), and half of which were not (distracters). To ensure morphology, the content of the MT materials corresponded to the
that the distracters looked similar to the targets and that they had book they read that week. Thus, there were corresponding MT
not been read by the participating children, distracters were se- items for each storybook used in DR. Parents were expected to
lected from the same series but different level of storybooks as the read with their child using DR and then to teach him or her
targets, and these storybooks were all developed and published in morphological awareness with the MT books. Items used in MT
mainland China only, so children from Hong Kong had not pre- were different from the testing items of the morpheme identifica-
viously been exposed to them. Children were asked to select from tion and the morphological construction tasks.
the 24 pictures those they had read before. This task was admin- Morphological construction training focused on increasing chil-
istered at posttesting only and served as a measure of the number dren’s awareness of the morphosyllabic properties of Chinese and
of storybooks read during the 12-week program. Scores were identifying morphemes in pairs or groups of several words. For
calculated by subtracting the number of distracters chosen from the instance, in one of the items of the morphological construction
number of targets chosen. Higher scores reflected the fact that training, the story they read showed a farmer pulling a “carrot
more storybooks used in this study were read, and the maximum king” ( /lo4 baak6 wong4/) from the ground. Correspond-
score of this task was 12. ing to this story, the target item was “carrot king” ( /lo4
Demographic questionnaire. A demographic information baak6 wong4/), and the morphological construction training ma-
questionnaire was distributed to the parents of participating chil- terials included pictures of a big watermelon and a big ice cream.
dren before the 12-week program. The questionnaire consisted of Parents were first required to explain to their child that a “carrot
questions about the participating child’s school, class, sex, date of king” ( /lo4 baak6 wong4/) represented a big carrot. With
birth, maternal education level, maternal occupation, paternal ed- the aid of the picture, parents were then required to explain to their
ucation level, paternal occupation, family income, and reading child that a “watermelon king” ( /sai1gwaa1 wong4/) rep-
resources and practices at home. resented a big watermelon. After that, the child was asked to
Follow-up questionnaire. A follow-up questionnaire for eval- compose a word or phrase meaning a big ice cream (i.e., “ice-
uating the 12-week program was distributed to the parents in the cream king” ( /syut3 gou1wong4/). All items are avail-
DR and the DR ⫹ MT conditions after the 12-week program. The able from the authors upon request. There were 53 items in total,
purpose of this questionnaire was to collect feedback from parents
4.5 items for each story on average, for the morphological con-
on the DR and the MT. The questionnaire included questions about
struction training.
whether the parents liked the DR and MT methods and whether
Homophone training focused on sensitizing children’s aware-
they used the DR technique when they read other books with their
ness that the same syllable might represent different meanings. For
children.
instance, in one of the items of the homophone training, the story
they read showed a little sheep looking for its mother. Correspond-
Conditions ing to this story, the target item was the little sheep ( /siu2
joeng4/), and the target syllable was joeng4. The homophone
DR. Each participant was provided with a total of 12 books
training materials included pictures of the sun ( /taai3 jo-
with hints for prompt questions added in each book and a guideline
eng4/) and the sea ( /hoi2 joeng4/). Parents were required to
that included information about the DR technique. Books used in
label the little sheep ( /siu2 joeng4/), the sun ( /taai3
the present study included a lot of pictures and did not rely heavily
joeng4/), and the sea ( /hoi2 joeng4/) corresponding to the
on the written text. The fundamental reading technique in DR is
pictures in the storybook and the training book. The child was then
the PEER sequence in parent– child reading: The parent prompts
the child to say something about the storybook, evaluates the asked to select the picture that corresponded to the meanings of the
child’s response, expands the child’s responses by rephrasing and wool ( /joeng4 mou4/) and the sunlight ( /joeng4
adding information, and repeats the prompt to ensure the child has gwong1/), and the answers would be the sheep ( /siu2 jo-
learned from the expansion. There are five types of prompts, eng4/) and the sun ( /taai3 joeng4/), respectively. All story
including completion, recall, open-ended, wh-, and distancing items are available from the authors upon request. There were 67
prompts, used in the DR technique. items in total, 5.6 items for each story on average, for the homo-
DR with MT. Based on the research evidence on the possibility phone training.
of combining DR and metalinguistic teaching, and the importance TR. Participants were provided with 12 books that were the
of morphological awareness for Chinese literacy, the present study same as those used in the DR and the DR ⫹ MT conditions before
added a MT component to the DR method in one experimental the program. However, no hints were added in the books. Parents
condition. We used the DR materials to teach morphology. were requested to read to their children as they normally would.
The materials provided to this group were the same as those Control. No books were initially provided, and parents were
given to the DR group, except MT materials and techniques were expected to rely on their regular literacy habits with their children
238 CHOW, MCBRIDE-CHANG, CHEUNG, AND CHOW

during the 12-week program. After the posttesting, a set of 12 Results

books was given to the participants with a full debriefing as to the
nature of the study. Pretest Measures
To ensure the sampling was unbiased, separate ANOVAs were
conducted to compare the demographic information and home
Procedure
literacy resources and practices among the four conditions. One
After informed consent had been obtained from parents, the hundred twenty-four demographic questionnaires were collected
parents were given a demographic information questionnaire. The from participating parents successfully (35 from parents in the
children were pretested in two 30-min sessions in their school by DR ⫹ MT condition; 29 from parents in the DR condition; 31 from
trained psychology major undergraduates and postgraduates who parents in the TR condition; and 29 from parents in the control
condition). Participants in the four conditions did not differ sig-
were blind to the group placements. The children were adminis-
nificantly on any of these demographic and home literacy mea-
tered the RCPM (Raven et al., 1995), the Chinese character rec-
sures, including chronological age, sex, maternal educational level,
ognition task, the Cantonese receptive vocabulary test, the mor-
paternal educational level, family income, number of books owned
pheme identification task, the morphological construction task,
by children, frequency of parent– child reading, and parents’ daily
and the children’s questionnaire on reading interest. Children were
reading habits (all ps ⬎ .05). The descriptive statistics on demo-
assigned randomly to one of the four conditions, the DR ⫹ MT,
graphics and home literacy resources and practices are presented in
DR, TR, and control conditions.
Table 1. Another ANOVA was used to compare scores on the
Materials were then distributed to the parents of the DR ⫹ MT, RCPM among the groups to test for factors that might affect the
DR, and TR groups. A 1-hr training session was held separately for children’s language and literacy standard as well as their capacity
the parents of the DR ⫹ MT and the DR groups before the reading for improvement. No significant difference was found ( p ⬎ .05).
intervention started in the schools. As this study focused on how The descriptive statistics for the RCPM scores are presented in
parents’ language and literacy instruction methods at home affect Table 2. Accordingly, these pretest measures were not included in
children’s language and literacy acquisition, the training sessions further analyses.
focused on the training of parents rather than on children. In the Five separate ANOVAs were conducted to compare pretest
training session for the DR group, parents were trained to use DR scores among the four groups on the tasks of Chinese character
and to use the materials for DR through live instruction and recognition, Cantonese receptive vocabulary, morpheme identifi-
demonstration conducted by Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow. The training cation, morphological construction, and reading interest, to ensure
session for the DR ⫹ MT group was similar to that for the DR that any group differences were not due to biased sampling, and
group, except that, in addition, parents were trained to use MT the descriptive statistics for each task are presented in Table 2.
strategies and to use the materials for MT. The time spent for the Because the five measures were tapping children’s performance in
DR instruction and the demonstration for the DR and the DR ⫹ different domains, we tested them as five separate hypotheses with
MT groups was equivalent. The training sessions for the DR and separate ANOVAs rather than treating them as indicators of one
the DR ⫹ MT groups had been designed to be equivalent in common construct. No significant differences were found on the
duration by allowing parents in the DR group to have a longer pretest scores of these tasks among the four groups (all ps ⬎ .05).
question-and-answer session. The guidelines distributed to these
two groups contained major points of the techniques given in the Storybook Identification
training sessions and additional examples to illustrate the use of
the techniques. The descriptive statistics for the storybook identification scores
The parent– child reading program was conducted for 12 weeks. are presented in Table 2. There were 19 distracter items in total
Parents in the DR and the TR conditions were encouraged to read selected by all participating children. Children in the control
each book twice in a week for 20 min each time with their children. group, who had not read any of the books included in this task,
scored near zero on average, indicating that this task distinguished
Parents in the DR ⫹ MT condition were encouraged to read each
children who had and had not read the storybooks. Children in the
book, including MT, twice in a week for 20 min each time with
DR ⫹ MT, DR, and TR conditions scored from 10 to 11 on
their children, identical to the encouragement given the DR and the
average, suggesting that children in these conditions had read most
TR groups. During the 12-week intervention, parents of the DR ⫹
of the books during the 12-week reading program.
MT, the DR, and the TR groups were contacted over the phone on
a fortnightly basis to remind them to read the books with their
children and to find out whether they encountered any problems. Group Improvement
Children were then immediately posttested on the tasks by way Five separate repeated measures analyses were performed on the
of the same measurements used in pretesting, except the RCPM tasks of Chinese character recognition, Cantonese receptive vo-
was not administered after the program. The storybook identifica- cabulary, morpheme identification, morphological construction,
tion task was also administered. A follow-up questionnaire was and reading interest, to compare improvement across groups be-
distributed to the parents of the DR ⫹ MT and the DR conditions, fore and after the 12-week program. The descriptive statistics for
and the storybooks were given to the parents of the control group the pretest and posttest scores on each task are presented in Table
after the posttesting of their children. Following completion of this 2. Significant interaction effects were found for the Chinese char-
study, training sessions were held for all participating parents on acter recognition task, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.94, p ⬍ .05; the Cantonese
the DR and MT techniques. receptive vocabulary test, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.77, p ⬍ .05; the mor-
 DIALOGIC READING AND MORPHOLOGY TRAINING 239

Table 1 Table 2
Descriptive Statistics on the Demographic Measures Descriptive Statistics on the Tasks Administered at Pretesting
and Posttesting
Characteristic and condition N M SD Male Female
Pretest Posttest
Chronological age (in months)
DR ⫹ MT 38 64.82 3.74 Task of condition M SD M SD
DR 37 63.11 4.07
TR 37 63.32 3.59 Chinese character recognition
Control 36 63.92 4.00 DR ⫹ MT 52.45 27.54 67.11 27.64
Total 148 63.80 3.87 DR 50.86 26.49 60.89 26.98
Maternal education TR 50.00 25.97 60.22 26.36
DR ⫹ MT 36 3.06 1.01 Control 50.19 25.47 60.08 29.27
DR 29 3.17 1.14 Cantonese receptive vocabulary
TR 32 2.75 .98 DR ⫹ MT 37.39 6.84 41.37 7.05
Control 30 2.93 .94 DR 36.19 5.59 41.19 5.60
Total 127 2.98 1.02 TR 36.41 5.93 38.86 5.07
Paternal education Control 37.19 6.73 38.75 6.47
DR ⫹ MT 36 3.33 1.01 Morpheme identification
DR 30 3.47 1.04 DR ⫹ MT 2.79 1.70 3.26 1.18
TR 31 3.13 1.02 DR 3.35 1.57 3.35 1.27
Control 30 3.10 1.03 TR 3.46 1.19 2.81 1.31
Total 127 3.26 1.03 Control 3.11 1.45 2.89 1.25
Family income Morphological construction
DR ⫹ MT 35 4.77 1.03 DR ⫹ MT 8.97 3.55 11.45 3.81
DR 30 4.87 1.04 DR 8.86 4.20 11.57 3.56
TR 31 4.48 1.03 TR 8.08 3.80 10.03 3.51
Control 29 4.86 .92 Control 8.36 4.16 11.72 3.51
Total 125 4.74 1.01 Children’s questionnaire on reading interest
Number of storybooks DR ⫹ MT 3.30 .43 3.46 .38
DR ⫹ MT 36 4.11 .82 DR 3.26 .58 3.42 .45
DR 29 3.79 .94 TR 3.44 .41 3.36 .47
TR 32 3.78 1.01 Control 3.37 .51 3.23 .54
Control 30 3.73 .87 Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices
Total 127 3.87 .91 DR ⫹ MT 13.18 3.11 – –
Frequency of parent-child reading DR 13.28 2.81 – –
DR ⫹ MT 36 4.64 .72 TR 12.57 2.51 – –
DR 30 4.80 .61 Control 12.61 2.97 – –
TR 32 4.75 .44 Storybook identification
Control 30 4.50 .97 DR ⫹ MT – – 10.97 2.33
Total 128 4.67 .71 DR – – 10.35 2.32
Parents’ daily reading habits TR – – 11.00 1.63
DR ⫹ MT 36 3.28 .82 Control – – .47 1.18
DR 30 3.33 .92
TR 32 3.38 .79 Note. N ⫽ 148 (38 for DR ⫹ MT; 37 for DR; 37 for TR; 36 for control).
Control 30 3.10 1.00 Dashes indicate that data were not applicable for both the Storybook
Total 128 3.27 .88 identification task at pretest and the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices
Gender task at posttest. DR ⫽ dialogic reading; MT ⫽ morphology training; TR ⫽
DR ⫹ MT 23 15 typical reading.
DR 23 14
TR 23 14
Control 22 14
Total 91 57 pheme identification task, F(3, 144) ⫽ 3.10, p ⬍ .05; and the
children’s questionnaire on reading interest, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.81, p ⬍
Note. The maternal and paternal educational levels were entered as
follows: 1 ⫽ primary, 2 ⫽ secondary, 3 ⫽ preparatory, 4 ⫽ college, and .05, indicating different conditions yielded different degrees of
5 ⫽ postgraduate. The family income per month was entered in Hong Kong changes in scores. Interaction effects were not significant for the
(HK) dollars as follows: 1 ⫽ ⬍HK$5,000 ($641 in U.S. dollars), 2 ⫽ morphological construction task ( p ⬎ .05).
HK$5,000 –$9,999 ($641–$1,282 in U.S. dollars), 3 ⫽ HK$10,000 – To investigate which conditions yielded greater improvement,
$19,999 ($1,282–$2,564 in U.S. dollars), 4 ⫽ HK$20,000 –$39,999
($2,564 –$5,128 in U.S. dollars), 5 ⫽ HK$40,000 –$59,999 ($5,128 – difference scores of these tasks were calculated by subtracting the
$7,692 in U.S. dollars), and 6 ⫽ ⱖHK$60,000 ($7,692 in U.S. dollars). posttest scores from the pretest scores for each group. Separate
The number of storybooks was entered as follows: 1 ⫽ none, 2 ⫽ ⬍10, ANOVAs and least significant difference (LSD) post hoc tests
3 ⫽ 10 –29, 4 ⫽ 30 – 49, and 5 ⫽ ⱖ50. Frequency of parent-child reading were conducted on the difference scores of each task. Also, in
was entered as follows: 1 ⫽ none, 2 ⫽ ⬍10 times in a year, 3 ⫽ once a
order to further investigate the effectiveness of the intervention, a
month, 4 ⫽ once a week, and 5 ⫽ ⬎1 time in a week. Parent’s daily
reading habits were entered as follows: 1 ⫽ none, 2 ⫽ 0 –14 min, 3 ⫽ Cohen’s d was conducted to determine the effect sizes for all
15–29 min, 4 ⫽ 30 –59 min, 5 ⫽ 1–2 hr, and 6 ⫽ ⬎2 hr. DR ⫽ dialogic significant and marginally significant findings. Cohen’s d was
reading; MT ⫽ morphology training; TR ⫽ typical reading. 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,
240 CHOW, MCBRIDE-CHANG, CHEUNG, AND CHOW

1988). Cohen’s ds equal to .2, .5, and .8 represent a small, Follow-Up Questionnaire
medium, and large effect, respectively (Cohen, 1988). The
typical effect size in published reports of educational and psy- Seventy percent (26/37) of the parents of the DR group and 84%
chological interventions is about .33 (Cohen, 1977; Sedlmeier (32/38) of the parents of the DR ⫹ MT group returned the
& Gigerenzer, 1989). follow-up questionnaire. Eighty-one percent of the parents re-
Significant differences were found for the Chinese character ported that they liked DR, and no parents disliked it. Eighty-four
percent of the parents used the DR techniques when they read
recognition task, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.78, p ⬍ .05, and LSD post hoc
storybooks other than those used in the present study with their
tests showed significant differences between the DR ⫹ MT group
children. Eighty-two percent of the parents of the DR ⫹ MT group
and the other three groups (contrast estimates were 4.63 for the
reported that they liked the MT, whereas 6% of parents disliked it.
DR ⫹ MT and DR groups, 4.47 for the DR ⫹ MT and TR groups,
The parents who disliked the MT expressed concerns about
and 4.77 for the DR ⫹ MT and control groups; ps ⬍ .05). Other
whether their child might learn uncommon phraseology through
group differences were not significant (all ps ⬎ .05). Cohen’s d for morphological construction training. They believed that these un-
the DR ⫹ MT and the DR groups was .68, for the DR ⫹ MT and usual phrases would hinder their children’s oral expression and
the TR groups was .56, and for the DR ⫹ MT and the control language development.
groups was .52. Effect size indices showed medium effects of the
DR ⫹ MT condition on Chinese reading ability.
Significant differences were found for the Cantonese receptive Discussion
vocabulary test, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.77, p ⬍ .05, and LSD post hoc tests The present study investigated the effectiveness of the DR
indicated significant differences between the DR and the TR method, and a combination of the DR method and MT, on facil-
conditions (contrast estimate was 2.54; p ⬍ .05) and between the itating children’s language and literacy skills, morphological
DR and the control conditions (contrast estimate was 3.44; p ⬍ awareness, and interest in reading. In comparison with the typical
.05). The difference between the DR ⫹ MT and the control reading (TR) and control groups, the DR group attained higher
conditions was not significant (contrast estimate was 2.42; p ⬍ vocabulary knowledge over the 12-week study, underscoring the
.06). Other group differences were not significant (all ps ⬎ .05). importance of parent– child reading for general oral language
Cohen’s d for the DR ⫹ MT and the control groups was .43, for skills. In contrast, in comparison with the three other groups
the DR and TR groups was .49, and for the DR and the control included, the DR ⫹ MT group improved significantly more in
groups was .59. Effect size indices showed medium effects of the Chinese character recognition, suggesting that parents’ explicit
DR ⫹ MT and DR training on Cantonese receptive vocabulary metalinguistic instruction may better prepare children for learning
ability. to read. Both interventions yielded enhanced reading interest com-
Significant differences were found for the morpheme identifi- pared to the control condition. These findings are discussed in
cation task, F(3, 144) ⫽ 3.10, p ⬍ .05, and LSD post hoc tests more detail below.
indicated significant differences between the DR ⫹ MT and the The findings of the present study demonstrated that the DR
TR conditions (contrast estimate was 1.12; p ⬍ .05). The differ- intervention fostered gains in children’s receptive vocabulary and
ence between the DR ⫹ MT and the control conditions was not reading interest. The positive impact of DR on children’s receptive
significant (contrast estimate was .70; p ⬍ .07). Other group vocabulary growth has been widely demonstrated in past studies
differences were not significant (all ps ⬎ .05). Cohen’s d for the (e.g., Lim, 1999; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992), and the
DR ⫹ MT and TR groups was .69, and for the DR ⫹ MT and findings of the present study have further supported the effective-
control groups was .50. Effect size indices showed medium effects ness of DR in enhancing receptive vocabulary growth among
of the DR ⫹ MT condition on morpheme identification skill. The Chinese children (Chow & McBride-Chang, 2003; Fung et al.,
TR and the control conditions showed decreases over time, which 2005). The results of enhanced interest in reading through DR are
also in line with those of Ortiz et al. (2001).
might be attributable to random variation of performance, and
However, the DR condition did not yield greater gains in char-
these difference scores were allowed to be negative, rather than
acter recognition ability in the present study. One reason for this is
being reset to zero, to reflect the actual performance of the chil-
that the principle focus of DR is on facilitating children’s oral
dren.
language skills through parent-child interaction (Whitehurst et al.,
Significant differences were found among the children’s ques-
1988) and the DR technique does not emphasize teaching or
tionnaire responses on reading interest as well, F(3, 144) ⫽ 2.81, discussion about print. Children in the DR condition also did not
p ⬍ .05, and LSD post hoc tests indicated significant differences show greater improvement in morphological awareness. Previous
between the DR ⫹ MT and the control conditions (contrast esti- studies have suggested that oral scaffolding does not affect met-
mate was .29; p ⬍ .05) and between the DR and the control alinguistic awareness development. For example, Fey et al. (1994)
conditions (contrast estimate was .30; p ⬍ .05). The difference found that after a 10-month intervention of oral scaffolding of
between the DR and the TR conditions was not significant (con- specific syntactic forms, preschoolers in the intervention group
trast estimate was .24; p ⬍ .07). Other group differences were not showed greater improvement on syntactic but not phonological
significant (all ps ⬎ .05). Cohen’s d for the DR ⫹ MT and the skills.
control groups was .62, for the DR and the TR groups was .44, and In contrast, the DR with MT intervention, which focused both
for the DR and the control groups was .55. Effect size indices on metalinguistic training and oral language, yielded greater
showed medium effects of the DR ⫹ MT and the DR conditions on growth in character recognition ability and a trend toward greater
reading interest. improvement on receptive vocabulary. Also, this intervention fos-
 DIALOGIC READING AND MORPHOLOGY TRAINING 241

tered gains in children’s reading interest compared to the control This situation is in some ways analogous to the relation between
condition. The enhanced performance of character recognition in phonological awareness and word reading/letter recognition in
the DR with MT condition over the DR group suggested that MT alphabetic languages. Phonological awareness fine-tunes the
was effective in enhancing children’s skills in learning to read, child’s sensitivity to small units of sounds, which are directly
probably by promoting an awareness of lexical morphemes, which expressed in the alphabetic system as letters or strings of letters.
are written as characters and phonologically realized as syllables. Hence, children having good phonological awareness are better
This awareness provides a precondition for children’s further ac- able to recognize or sound out individual letters or sequences of
quisition of character–syllable mapping. Hence, the effect of mor- letters (i.e., words as written in the alphabetic system). In the
phological training on character recognition is believed to be present situation, morphological awareness fine-tunes the child’s
indirect; morphological awareness prepares the child for efficient sensitivity to small units of meaning, which are directly expressed
learning in print–sound mapping. in logographic Chinese as characters (i.e., lexical morphemes as
These findings of facilitated reading ability through MT that written in the logographic system). Therefore, children having
does not focus on the teaching of print are consistent with those of good morphological awareness, because of MT, are better able to
past MT studies (e.g., C.-L. Fu & Huang, 2000; Nagy et al., 2002) recognize and read aloud individual characters. In this sense, the
and correlational studies on morphological awareness tasks that present impact of morphological awareness on character recogni-
did not involve the testing of print (e.g., the morpheme identifi- tion is an observation in parallel with the effect of phonological
cation and the morphological construction tasks used in this study) awareness on letter and word recognition in the alphabetic system.
and Chinese character recognition ability (e.g., McBride-Chang et The fundamental distinction has to do with whether the basic units
al., 2003, 2005). Such findings are also in line with previous of writing are there to represent sound (alphabetic) or meaning
studies demonstrating that phonological awareness training, with- (logographic).
out an explicit focus on print, facilitates greater word recognition Furthermore, enhanced homophone sensitivity could help chil-
in children learning to read alphabetic scripts (e.g., Bus & van dren map oral syllables onto printed words and become more
IJzendoorn, 1999). Thus, the present study represented a substan- aware of the morphosyllabic nature of Chinese. When they under-
tial extension of this work because it probed into whether, if stand the concept that the same syllable might have different
greater morphological awareness tends to be associated with en- meanings, children might apply this concept for reading charac-
hanced character recognition in correlational studies, training in ters. This understanding may be particularly useful when they
morphological awareness could also enhance reading, which is encounter visually distinct characters with the same pronunciation,
parallel to results demonstrated in previous studies of phonological a relatively common occurrence in Chinese. In this study, only
awareness and word recognition in English and other alphabetic children with MT improved on the morpheme identification task
languages. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the DR with MT across pre- and posttesting (children in the other conditions
intervention could foster children’s character recognition ability showed steady or decreased performance on this task), indicating
without sacrificing their interest in reading. that explicit instruction fosters homophone sensitivity. Thus, the
Children in the DR with MT condition, in comparison with the findings of this study suggest that explicit instruction to promote
children in the TR condition, had larger gains in homophone homophone awareness might be useful, both at home and in
awareness tapped by the morpheme identification task. The chil- school, for promoting early literacy development in Chinese.
dren in the DR with MT condition also showed a trend toward Unlike the morpheme identification task, there was notable
greater improvement in homophone awareness than the children in improvement on the performance of the morphological construc-
the control condition. Though the DR with MT group did not show tion task across the pre- and posttest in all groups, though the
greater improvement in homophone awareness than the DR group, performance did not significantly differ across groups. This is
they showed enhanced performance in homophone awareness than noteworthy because it suggests that children gain in lexical com-
did the TR group, and the performance did not differ between the pounding skills through ordinary usage of language or literacy,
DR and the TR conditions. These findings partially demonstrate regardless of whether such skills are explicitly trained or not. Thus,
the effectiveness of explicit instruction in metalinguistic skills in MT may tend to be more effective in fostering children’s homo-
young children. MT may facilitate children’s reading abilities in at phone sensitivity than in fostering their lexical compounding abil-
least three ways. First, as discussed, it facilitates children’s mor- ity. In other words, these two aspects of morphological awareness
phological awareness, and this might in turn promote children’s might have different developmental trajectories, being sensitive to
Chinese character recognition abilities, by promoting the under- different environmental and instructional factors. We speculate
standing that morphemes are flexibly combined into larger units that morphological awareness is a nonunitary, multiaspectual con-
and that they are written as characters and phonologically realized struct, similar to the way phonological awareness has been con-
as syllables. Second, instruction might have changed parents’ ceptualized. For instance, Yopp (1988) has demonstrated that
literacy instruction behaviors toward the children, thus fostering different phonological awareness tasks tap different component
their capabilities of learning Chinese characters both at home and abilities underlying the umbrella notion of phonological aware-
in school. Hence, this amounts to modification of parental attitude ness. These abilities are differentially associated with some well-
and instructional strategies, which might result in relatively long- known correlates of phonological awareness, such as reading. A
term changes in children’s learning behavior. Third, morphologi- similar idea can be extended to morphological awareness. Further
cal instruction may have consolidated the associations that the studies are thus required to compare the developmental paths of
children had learned in their preschool. These three possibilities all homophone sensitivity and lexical compounding, and also to rec-
point to an indirect effect of MT on the development of character ognize the relative contributions of training to each of these
reading. aspects.
242 CHOW, MCBRIDE-CHANG, CHEUNG, AND CHOW

In the present study, MT did not further enhance children’s more direct measure of parents’ compliance to the program, such
receptive vocabulary gains when it was combined with DR. This as audiotaping or videotaping of the reading session, can be
result might be attributable to the fact that less time was spent on included in future studies. Also, the morpheme identification task
DR in this condition. Whitehurst, Epstein, et al. (1994) noted that had a relatively low reliability. Therefore, readers should be cau-
the more parents read dialogically to their children at home, the tious when interpreting the results of this task. One goal of our
more gains their children made in their language abilities. During future work is to create a more reliable measure of homophone
the 12-week program, all parents, except those in the control awareness.
group, were encouraged to engage in our prescribed literacy ac- Also, we investigated the effects of the intervention on receptive
tivities with their child twice per week for 20 min each time. vocabulary and character recognition abilities as proxies of oral
Although participants in the DR condition were expected to spend language and literacy, respectively. Though many previous DR
20 min each time reading using the DR method, participants in the studies have tested expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary
DR ⫹ MT condition might have spent fewer than 20 min each time was included in this study because the children were relatively
reading with the DR method because they spent part of the pre- young and our best measure of Cantonese vocabulary knowledge
scribed 20-min period engaged in MT. Further studies can inves- for this age range was a receptive measure. Further research can
tigate the impact of the duration of DR or of MT on children’s include a broader array of oral language and literacy skills, such as
language development. expressive vocabulary, oral fluency, and comprehension, to pro-
In this study, children in the TR condition did not show signif- vide a full picture of the impacts of DR and MT on children’s
icantly greater improvement across all tasks administered, in com- language and literacy development.
parison with those in the control group. These findings indicate In addition, although positive outcomes on children’s literacy
that typical parent– child reading may not fully exploit the poten- and language skills and their interest in reading were indicated, the
tial of parent– child reading in promoting children’s literacy and specific components of DR and the relative contributions of the
language growth and highlight the importance of interaction dur- morphological construction and homophone training that facili-
ing the reading process. tated language and literacy skills were not identified. Specific
Theoretically, these results support a distinction between oral components of DR, such as parents’ modified behavior, parents’
language and metalinguistic activities in promoting early language specific types of questioning, and children’s increased responsive-
and literacy. Interactive parent– child reading is ideal in fostering ness, might be particularly important for the success of DR.
vocabulary growth in young children. In contrast, parents’ explicit Investigating the underlying mechanism of DR is a promising area
teaching of metalinguistic skills may be particularly effective for of future research. Further studies should also be conducted to
promoting Chinese character acquisition. Future studies might investigate the relative importance of morphological construction
further exploit this distinction by training metalinguistic skills in and homophone training for children’s literacy development. This
two ways, one without teaching print knowledge and the other with was among the first studies of its kind to explore the effects of very
print as an explicit component of the training. Previous research on early metalinguistic training on Chinese character acquisition. In
alphabetic orthographies has demonstrated that metalinguistic future work, we will disentangle the possible influences of lexical
(phonological) training with print tends to promote even better compounding knowledge and homophone awareness for reading
word recognition skills than does such training in the absence of skills.
print (e.g., Schneider, Roth, & Ennemoser, 2000). Also, these Finally, the DR method was used in the present study to foster
results show that the ways in which parents read and interact with Chinese literacy and language development among children in Hong
their children could influence children’s interest in reading. Kong. In Hong Kong, Cantonese pronunciation of the character is
The present study has several practical implications. First, this used when it is read aloud, but Modern Standard Chinese is used
study provides effective methods to promote children’s literacy when it is read or written (H. Cheung & Ng, 2003). Therefore, for
and language skills, as well as reading interest in a relatively short children from Hong Kong, their written Chinese does not directly
period of time. The 12-week intervention produced significant correspond to their spoken Cantonese. As DR was originally devel-
gains in children’s literacy, language, and reading interest. Second, oped for English-speaking children whose spoken and written lan-
the present study provides methods to facilitate parent– child in- guage is more directly matched, the effects of DR on Chinese literacy
teraction and to include linguistic instruction in Chinese family growth might be relatively small among children in Hong Kong.
literacy activities. Participating parents had no difficulties success- Therefore, it is recommended that a component of teaching the
fully using DR and MT at home. Third, parents with no back- pronunciation and the meaning of written forms can be added to the
ground in psychology or linguistics can learn and use these tech- DR method for children in Hong Kong or for other children whose
niques easily. This is particularly important because parental spoken language does not directly correspond to the written one.
involvement is an essential component of children’s knowledge For instance, parents can label the words in formal Chinese (e.g.,
and skill acquisition. Fourth, and last, training parents to handle the [/siu2 hoi4/; a child]) and explicitly explain that the words
DR and MT techniques is cost- and time-efficient. A 1-hr training (e.g., [/siu2 hoi4/; a child]) in written Chinese correspond to
session and copies of the guidelines were effective to train parents more colloquial counterparts (e.g., [/sai3 lou6/; a child]) in
to use the techniques at home. spoken Cantonese.
There were some limitations of this study. Children’s storybook
identification was used as an indicator of the implementation of the Conclusion
intervention during the 12-week program in this study. Although
this is a cost- and time-efficient method, it is a relatively indirect To summarize, the present study has successfully demonstrated
method to measure parents’ compliance. It is recommended that a that DR is an effective method in facilitating children’s receptive
 DIALOGIC READING AND MORPHOLOGY TRAINING 243

vocabulary development and interest in reading. In addition, this Fu, C.-L., & Huang, H. S. (2000). The effects of metalinguistic awareness
experiment demonstrated the effectiveness of an MT program training of the low-achievers at elementary schools. Chinese Journal of
conducted by parents for promoting children’s ability to read Psychology, 42(1), 101–112.
Chinese characters. The findings in the present study support Fu, G. S. (1987). The Hong Kong bilingual. In R. Lord & N. L. Cheng
causal relations between home literacy activities and children’s (Eds.), Language education in Hong Kong (pp. 27–50). Hong Kong,
language and literacy acquisition and highlight the importance of China: The Chinese University Press.
Fung, P. C., Chow, B. W.-Y., & McBride-Chang, C. (2005). The impact of
parent– child interaction at different levels. These results also
a dialogic reading program on deaf and hard-of-hearing kindergarten and
underscore the importance of distinguishing general oral parent–
early primary school-aged students in Hong Kong. Journal of Deaf
child interactions from explicit metalinguistic teaching for under- Studies and Deaf Education, 10(1), 82–95.
standing the developmental trajectories of early language and Hargrave, A. C., & Sénéchal, M. (2000). A book reading intervention with
literacy. preschool children who have limited vocabularies: The benefits of
regular reading and dialogic reading. Early Childhood Research Quar-
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