Maternal mediation of word writing in Chinese across Hong Kong and Beijing.

Abstract

We examined the nature of matemal mediation of children's word writing and its associations to kindergartners' independent Chinese reading and writing skills in 63 Hong Kong and 43 Beijing mother-child dyads. The nature of matemal mediation of writing was analyzed across the 3 dimensions of cognitive support, autonomy support, and social-emotional support fix)m mothers. Even with children's independent cognitive skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, orthographic knowledge) statistically controlled, both the cognitive and autonomy support dimensions of matemal mediation were uniquely associated with word reading in both cultures; both dimensions were also uniquely associated with word writing in Beijing only. With cognitive skills statistically controlled, one aspect of the social-emotional support dimension-mothers' focus on the process of writing (e.g., "make this stroke longer")-was also uniquely associated with both word writing and reading in Hong Kong but was only weakly associated (p < .10) with word reading in Beijing. A few specific strategy differences in matemal mediation in these dimensions were documented across cultures as well. Results underscore the importance of parental scaffolding of writing processes in young Chinese children across cultures.

Parental writing support and preschoolers’ early literacy, language, and fine motor skills

“…It should also be noted that although all of the families in the current study chose to speak English during the writing interaction, a subset of them reported that English was not their native language; if English was not the language that these were most comfortable with, their writing support may have been affected. Although further research on this issue is warranted, recent research indicates similarity across cultures and alphabets in terms of how parents' support children's writing and how such support relates to children's reading and writing outcomes (Levin et al, 2013; Lin, McBride-Chang, Aram, Shu, Levin, & Cho, 2011). Overall, it is noteworthy that even in this relatively high-SES sample of families, parents used relatively low levels of writing support.…”

“…It is hypothesized that parents' support will be positively related to children's literacy and fine motor skills (Aram, 2007; Aram & Levin, 2001; Lin et al, 2012), but not to their vocabularies (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002; Sénéchal et al, 1998). …”

Morphological awareness longitudinally predicts counting ability in Chinese kindergarteners

“…The syllable isolation task measures how young children detect and manipulate sounds at the syllable level and has been widely used to evaluate phonological awareness in English and Chinese reading studies (e.g., McBride-Chang, Wagner, Muse, Chow, & Shu, 2005). A similar test has been used to investigate phonological awareness among Hong Kong kindergartners (e.g., Lin et al, 2012).…”

Early Literacy Among Zambian Second Graders: The Role of Adult Mediation of Word Writing in Bemba

“…Prior to describing categories of adult mediation used in our study, details of how the strategies were ordered from low to high support are first presented. We ordered the various strategies of support from lowest to highest, consistent with other studies of joint writing mediation (Aram & Levin, , ; Lin et al., ; Skibbe et al., ) and also in line with studies of emergent literacy development that highlighted the need for quality scaffolding to establish academic competence (Neitzel & Stright, ). For example, in relation to parents’ cognitive support, it has been recognized that children who have information about strategies and the general nature of academic tasks are best equipped to cognitively manage their learning (Stright, Neitzel, Sears, & Hoke‐Sinex, ).…”

“…Aram and Levin's (, ) paradigm, which taps the complex scaffolding processes in early literacy interactions, has blazed a path for investigating the relations between parent–child writing interactions and literacy development. Based on this approach, parent–child joint writing interactions and literacy associations have been studied with Chinese (e.g., Lin et al., ) and U.S. (e.g., Skibbe et al., ) parent–child dyads, and the results generally underscored the fundamental role of early maternal mediation of writing in literacy development across languages and orthographies.…”