A study on Chinese and English reading abilities of Singaporean Chinese students with bilingual background = 新加坡雙語背景華族學生中英文閱讀能力研究

Abstract

In the age of the Internet and information, reading ability has become more important due to the information boom and multiple reading platforms. With the worldwide employment of English and rising international influence of Mandarin, the demand bilingual or multilinguistic abilities is increasing. Under the bilingual education policy in Singapore, Singaporean Chinese students have a unique Chinese-English bilingual background. The research focuses on the development of bilingual reading ability of Singaporean Chinese students in Singapore schools, and proposes an evaluation system for bilingual reading capabilities. The paper adds on to the framework of Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) in order to study the age and bilingual effects. The study adopts the following multiple methods to collect the data: (1) Chinese and English reading comprehension test based on PIRLS-Literacy and PIRLS; (2) questionnaires on student and teaching factors from PIRLS; (3) Semi-structural interviews; (4) reading observation. The latter two qualitative methods are developed to triangulate the self-reported survey data. ANOVA, regression and social network analysis are used to compare and analyze the results from two reading tests (Chinese and English), two questionnaires (student and teaching) and interview data. By both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study aims to explore the difference in the development of Chinese and English reading ability of Singaporean Chinese students with different types of family language background (Chinese dominant, English dominant, bilingual in Chinese and English), different ages of 7, 9 and 12 years old, and gender, to find out the critical factors that affect reading ability of student with different reading processes, and to investigate how teaching and student factors affect students’ reading ability. The results show an obvious effect of family language background on the development of reading ability for both Chinese and English, especially at an earlier age. Primary 4 for 9 years old students is the watershed for the development of English reading ability, hence it is reasonable to conduct the PIRLS assessment at this age. The impact of family language background on their English reading abilities have largely diminished for 12-years old. As a second language, the effect of family language background on the development of Chinese reading ability is more significant and last through the whole primary education. Comparing between Chinese and English reading ability, the test results of English are higher than that of Chinese. Both Chinese and English reading abilities improve with age, with more progress at younger age. Chinese-English relationship analysis show that there is a mutual interference for the development of Chinese and English reading ability in 7 years old, but mutual complement in 12 years old; a transition period is observed for 9 years old. Gender analysis show that girls performed better than boys in both Chinese and English reading tests, and that the difference between the scores of Chinese reading tests are greater than those in English. Girls also display faster change than boys during the transition period of relationship of Chinese and English reading abilities. Key words: Reading ability Bilingual PIRLS Chinese education Chinese and English Family language background First language Second language