Having looked in the previous chapter at the reading process and approaches to the teaching of reading, this chapter is about the role which parents play in children's language and literacy learning. It examines language maintenance and shift in the UK Chinese community, paying particular attention to the role of parents in the home and drawing on the same interview data that formed the basis for the analysis of attitudes towards British education in chapter three. The range of achievements of children in both speaking and writing Chinese will be explored, as will their parents' approach to supporting them. Attention will also be paid to the resources which are used in literacy learning. This chapter will look, too, in depth at what happens when five mothers set about supporting the literacy learning of their children. An analysis of video-recorded interactions will highlight the range of strategies which parents use, and the ways in which these may differ from the approaches more commonly found in British families and schools. 

Language maintenance and shift

No garden of flowers is stable and unchanging. With changes of season and weather comes growth and death, blossoming and weakening. Minority language communities are similarly in a constant state of change. Such language shift may be fast or slow, upwards or downwards, but shift is as likely as is garden growth (Baker, 1996: 43)

Immigration inevitably leads to language shift from the mother tongue to English (Alladina & Edwards, 1991). However, individual factors such as degree of identification with the mother tongue and culture affects the extent of this shift. Different minority communities have different responses to language shift. For more recently arrived communities such as the Bangladeshis and Vietnamese, the acquisition of English is much more important than maintaining the mother tongue. However, in longer established communities such as Eastern Europeans, children currently in school are the third and fourth generations of the original post-war settlers, for whom the maintenance of the mother tongue is a more urgent concern. 

Baker (1996: 46) sums up the linguistic factors which encourage language loss as follows:

1. Mother tongue is non-standard and or not in written form. 

2. Use of writing system which is expensive to reproduce and relatively difficult to learn. 

3. Home language of little or no international importance. 

4. Illiteracy (or aliteracy) in the home language. 

5. No tolerance of new terms from majority language; or too much tolerance of loan words leading to mixing and eventual  language loss. 

The Chinese community

Factor 2 poses a particular problem for the Chinese community in the UK: the writing system is expensive to reproduce; it is also difficult to learn. The other factors are less problematic. Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic. It has a long established and very stable tradition, and is a language of considerable international importance. In the Mainland Chinese community in the UK, levels of literacy are very high. Finally, attitudes towards loan words would seem to be neither too rigid nor too permissive. 

For the first generation, Chinese remains the dominant language and the only signs of language shift are in the use of English loanwords inserted into Chinese sentences. For example: 喝 一 杯 茶 he yi bel cha [have a cup of tea] becomes he yi bei tea; 给 我 一 张 纸 gei wo yi zhang zhi  [give me a piece of paper] becomes gei wo yi zhang paper. In general terms, the English items used as loanwords in Chinese conversations are those which describe things or events which are not found in Chinese culture, such as 'work permit',  'MOT', etc. English loanwords of this kind are common in spoken Chinese. 

This tendency has been described by many writers, including the American linguist Weinreich (1953), who also draws attention to borrowing in the opposite direction from family language to use in their everyday English speech. This borrowing, he says, seems to occur. 

In discourse that is informal and uninhibited by pretensions of high social status. Particularly likely to be transferred are colourful idiomatic expressions, difficult to translate, with strong affective overtones, whether endearing, pejorative or mildly obscene (p.34). 

As already indicated, the main feature of language shift in first generation settlers is the use of loanwords. However, for the second generation, the situation is quite different. Very few children have had any exposure to English on arrival in the UK. Many parents attempt to speak some English prior to arrival and in the early weeks although, inevitably, they will often be able to provide only an imperfect model(c.f. Cummins, 1996). However, within one to two years' formal education in Britain, children speak fluent English and tend to shift rapidly from Chinese to English, even in the home. Khan(1977) indicates that in a sample of 244 school pupils, only 20 percent spoke to their siblings in Chinese, while between 65 and 70 percent used two languages, English and Chinese. When Chinese children play together, English is usually the language of choice and children even replied in English to questions posed in Chinese. This general pattern is confirmed by LMP(1985). The survey shows that 60 percent of the parents in Coventry and 20 percent of the parents in London said that their children used English 'only' or 'mostly'. The same situation exists in the USA, too. Heath (1986:155) points out:

While the parents retain the minority language, the older children who have learned to play games, exchange taunts, and talk about school and their social concerns in English may speak English among themselves and their native tongue to their elders. 

This shift from Chinese to English has caused a great deal of concern for parents. Wong (1992: 47), for instance, comments that:

While more Chinese parents have chosen to send their children to British schools, they are quite anxious that their children should be taught the Chinese language to help them to maintain their cultural identity and some traditional Chinese cultural values. Owing to the English - only tradition in the British education system and the traditional practice of teaching 'prestigious' European languages as a second language at school, the support of incorporating the Chinese language into the curriculum by the British government is rather reluctant and piecemeal. As a result, Chinese parents' aspirations cannot be satisfied by the British education system. Such dissatisfaction, according to Dewey's theory of asynchronous change, will give rise to problems in the education of Chinese children in Britain. 

Parents views on language use

Parents in the present study recognised, without exception, the value of bilingualism for their children. For instance, Qianqi comments:

Our family is a typical Chinese family. We try to absorb Western idea but will also think it is important to maintain Chinese and try to ensure that we teach our children the things they need to know. 

However, parents were also aware of their heavy responsibility in ensuring that their children became balanced bilinguals. Qinfang, for instance, comments on her five year old daughter's language development in the following terms:

My daughter's Chinese is better than her English but not as good as children of the same age in China is. Her English is not as good as English children of the same age. 

This concern is not, of course, limited to the Chinese community. There is extensive discussion in the literature of language choice in bilingual families (see, for instance, Baker, 1996;  Alladina, 1991). 

The shift from Chinese to English as the children's preferred language was a matter of great concern for the parents in the present study. For instance, thirteen year old Qiqi came to Britain when she was six. For the first two or three years, she performed all important role as interpreter for her English teacher and some newly arrived Chinese children. Gradually, however, her parents felt that her level of fluency in Chinese deteriorated. Her code switches frequently between Chinese and English and generally her sentences have fewer Chinese words than English. Her parents have tried to find the reason for this dramatic shift and perceive this degree of code-switching as a serious problem.  Her father believes that his own aspirations to improve his English by talking with his daughter in English has been a contributory factor. He also identified her lack of the technical vocabulary in areas such as math as problematic. Qiqi herself describes the situation in the following terms:

At the beginning of the sentence, I speak Chinese because I am asked to do so but I'm less confident because many words I don't know how to speak in Chinese. After several words I begin to mix Chinese and English and I feel more confident. In the end I speak completely in English and I feel absolutely confident. 

Although, in the main, conversational skills were well developed, the acquisition of important grammatical features is often delayed. The mother of a seven year old boy complained that he often made mistakes with the classifiers which mark lexical items as belonging to the same semantic class (eg 一 杯 茶 yi bei cha ［a cup of tea］, 一 只 铅 笔 yi zhi qian bi[a pencil], 一 盏 灯 yi zhan deng [a lamp]). Another parent commented on the way her daughter sometimes could not differentiate between synonyms:

Once I said I changed 调 (diao) my job from one place to another. She understood that this was a kind of machine to pull me up 吊(diao) from one place to another. 

Parents frequently blamed themselves for language shift. They pointed out that they sometimes communicate with children in English unconsciously, or for reasons of convenience, especially when they need to refer to concepts which are absent or difficult to explain in Chinese. Li Ning, whose eight year old son had been in Britain for four years, felt that his preference for English might be the result of mixing the two languages. She had recently decided to tell him a Chinese story every night before he goes to bed and to try to insist on speaking only Chinese at home.

The children, for their part, were also very aware of how easy it is for English to become the dominant language and of the desirability of maintaining their fluency in Chinese. They identified as a major problem their limited access to Chinese associated with school learning. A fourteen years old boy pointed out:

It's difficult for me to think in two ways at the same time. When I speak Chinese, I forget my English. But I'd rather speak English. I don't know the school expressions in Chinese. 

As far as parents were concerned, the need for children to be able to communicate fluently in Chinese is paramount. A father described the patterns of language use of his seven year old son who had been in Britain for the last three years in the following terms:

We are constantly thinking about what to do about our child's Chinese if we go back to China. When he speaks Chinese, very often he is translating from English. If he goes back now, he'll be able to catch up. Otherwise he will fall behind in his Chinese. Once I asked him in Chinese,  'Why don't you speak Chinese?' He answered  'I don't know' -still in English. 

The situation of Mainland Chinese children is, of course, different in important respects from that of children whose families came from Hong Kong. Hong Kong Chinese are, in most cases, permanent settlers whereas Mainland Chinese are temporary migrants remaining outside the UK, on average, for three to four years. Since Mainland Chinese children will need to reintegrate into the very different Chinese education system on their return, parents understandably feel very anxious that children's spoken and written skills in Chinese should be maintained.  This situation is not, of course, unique. The literature includes various accounts of the situation of both Japanese children(Namie, 1991: Yamamoto, 1997; Yamamoto & Richards, 1998) and Libyan children (Abuarrosh, 1996)

Those Japanese who, usually stay in the UK for three to five years, are very keen for their children to make progress in English at the same time as maintaining their Japanese. They worry that the temporary stay in Britain will adversely affect their children's development in Japanese. The shift from Japanese to English may result in many educational and social disadvantages on children's return to Japan and may influence the parents' decision to curtail their stay in Britain. As Yamamoto(1997) points out, Many parents are in a dilemma as to how they set the language-learning policy for their children during their stay in the UK. Namie(1991: 182), also draws attention to the predicament of Japanese children abroad:

They experience culture shock twice, once at the time of starting schooling in Britain and again on return to Japan. It is said that difficulties in readjusting to the Japanese system are greater than the problems faced in adjusting to British or other systems. 

Libya families in the UK find themselves in a similar situation.  They are also temporary migrants. Abuarrosh (1996) describes how Libyan children spend two days every weekend in learning their mother tongue, Arabic, because their parents are anxious that they cannot reintegrate on their return to libya. 

Most parents in the present sample believed that the best way of ensuring children's fluency in Chinese is to adopt a Chinese-only policy in the home. Mary's father explained that they insist on speaking Chinese at home - they felt that mixing English and Chinese would be no better than speaking only English at home. They felt confident that their strategy was the only realistic one for a child born in Britain, adding, 'If we hadn't spoken Chinese only to her before the age of three, she would have lost the ability to speak Chinese'. Duan Nian's parents had also followed this policy. Their daughter has been in Britain for five years and they felt her level of fluency in Chinese was satisfactory for her age. They were pleased that she spontaneously speaks Chinese in the company of other Chinese, and believe that this achievement is the result of having insisted on speaking only Chinese at home. 

Learning to read and write Chinese

In the same way that children are exposed to very much more spoken Chinese in the home country than in the UK, their experience of Chinese writing is also more limited than their experience of written English. Yet children's involvement in literacy activities which carry significance in everyday life can be a powerful motivation for understanding and using written language(Taylor, 1983). It is important to remember, therefore, that children in bilingual households observe and participate in a variety of literacy events in home languages (Bhatt et al, 1994), and Chinese children are exposed to a wide range of Chinese printed materials. Interviews in all cases took place in people's homes, giving an opportunity to observe directly the nature of some of this material. This information was supplemented with direct questions to the children about their opportunities for reading in their first language. 

In every family, children have Chinese books brought from China. These include textbooks, story books and dictionaries. Communication with family and friends in China also allows children access to printed material in Chinese, at the same time as increasing their knowledge of Chinese culture. This communication can take a wide variety of forms. Birthday cards, calendars and examples of Chinese calligraphy offer the opportunity to look closely not only at the characters but also at the typically Chinese design. Letters are a regular feature of most families; one child receives emails in Chinese from a grandmother anxious to help him improve his written language. Several children mentioned that they read the special Chinese lesson for children in the overseas edition of The People's Daily. Much of the food bought in specialist supermarkets has Chinese writing on the packaging. 

Writing also features in visual media such as vidios and the Chinese programs broadcast by Star TV, for instance, in signs and street names.  Almost every family has Chinese tapes and CDs with Chinese writing on the sleeves. Karaoke tapes are also very popular: the desire to join in can be a very powerful motivation for children to read the lyrics as they appear on the screen. Although not as omnipresent as in China, there are none the less many opportunities for children to be exposed to Chinese writing.

The levels which children actually achieve are highly variable and would seem to depend on their age at arrival in the UK. Children who come at the end of primary school or in the course of secondary education have predictably high levels of skill in reading and writing Chinese. A sixteen year old girl who had arrived in Reading some five years earlier remarked that, while she could no longer operate at the same level as the class-

mates she had left behind in China, she was confident that she would be able to make up lost ground very rapidly if she went home. In contrast, the mother of a six year old girl who had been in the UK for two years complained that she had lost her earlier competence in reading and writing and now could only write her own name. These observations confirm the argument made, for instance, by Cummins(1996) that the optimum time for children to change from one country to another is between the ages of nine and eleven. At this point, children's literacy skills are firmly established in the first language and, when transferred to the second language, can help accelerate the learning of the second language; however, they are not old enough to experience the inhibitions typically associated with adolescent learners. 

In a discussion of Chinese families in the USA, Heath (1986: 157) remarks that:

Some parents may believe they are responsible not only for nurturing their children, but also for training them and acting as their primary teachers. In this view, the responsibility for the child's development rests with the parent as an active force in the child's training.  

This would certainly seem to be the case in Chinese parents' approach to literacy learning. In many cases，they spend up to an hour most days of the week on reading and writing related activities. A particular focus for parents is the supervision of the learning of Chinese characters. As one of the fathers pointed out:

Whether east or west，any lawful country must have its rules and principles. Chinese character writing teaches you rules and principles. It helps develop rigorous habits and allows you to improve through practice. 

Children often dislike this level of parental intervention. A nine year old boy who had lived in Britain since the age of four commented: 'I don't like Chinese character writing, it's too difficult. 'It is significant, however, that he added,  'But I know I have to learn it'. 

Progress in Chinese reading and writing requires single- mindedness and dedication on the part of parents.  As Qianqi pointed out:

You cannot always listen to the child's preferences. You have to insist that he learns. We are Chinese and some day we will go back to China. We insist that he spends time studying Chinese every other day. And before he goes to sleep, he has to read a Chinese book. 

Working in this way, Qianqi's son has progressed from Chinese Book 2 to Book 6 in three years since coming to Britain. He also practises Chinese handwriting at home. His level of understanding and fluency in Chinese is very high.   Nor has the additional work he has undertaken in Chinese in any way detracted from his progress in English: he recently passed the entrance examination to the local grammar school. 

Reading at home in five Chinese families

As I have already indicated, the Mainland Chinese community is a transitory one. Although increasing numbers of families are now staying for extended periods of time, the majority will return to the People's Republic where their children will need to reintegrate into a very different education system.  Parents are by far the most important source of help in maintaining the mother tongue in a small and isolated community like the Mainland Chinese. This creates enormous pressures on both parents and children. 

The driving force behind parents' efforts to maintain Chinese language and literacy is concern about the educational outcomes for children on their return to China. Children, however, are more concerned with the here and now and seldom share their parents concerns. They often offer resistance to their parents attempts to insist that they learn to read and write Chinese.  Guiying, for instance , talked about the fuss her son created every time they started work. 

Very often, parents have no direct experience of teaching young children to read and write. As is the case for many British parents supporting their children at home, all that they have to draw on is their own recollections of learning to read at school. But whereas British parents are usually in a  support role and are able to consult and seek advice from their children's teachers, many Chinese parents find that they have sole responsibility for teaching their child to read and write Chinese. 

The way in which they approached this task was interesting for a number of reasons. Close observation would show the extent to which there was a standard approach-or a range of approaches-towards  literacy teaching in the Mainland Chinese community. It would also serve as a valuable point of comparison for the experiences of children in school: what are the differences and similarities in approaches to print between home and school, and how might this information be of use to both parents and mainstream teachers?

I observed and videoed five mother-child dyads in the Reading area. I also collected data in open-ended, semi-structured interviews with the mothers. The names of the mother and child as well as detail of the child's age, the family's length of stay in the UK and the father's occupation are presented in table 6. 1 below:

Table 6. 1: Details of the five case study families





All the reading interactions and interviews took place in Chinese and were then translated into English. The discussion which follows is based on an analysis of the Englislh translations of the transcripts, using NUD. IST(Non-Numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing), a software programme which is specially designed for qualitative data analysis. 

The categories which emerged as important in this analysis included the way in which the 'teacher' models the text; the very direct teaching style with heavy use of instructions; the equally heavy reliance on questions as a teaching technique; the range of strategies which mothers use for explaining the text to their children; the use of review and practice strategies;  and the distinctive patterns of response to children's efforts.  Using the NUD. IST software, a change from one analytical category to another was encoded with a return. In some instances, it was possible to categorise the same stretch of speech in different ways: for instance, an instruction can also be an example of review and practice. 

It should be noted that mothers and, not children, form the main focus for this analysis. This is not to minimize the fact that reading interactions involve two parties and that the comments and responses of the mothers influence and are influenced by the comments and responses of the children. However, the decision to place the main emphasis on the strategies used by the mothers, -rather than the interactions themselves, was influenced by the desire to make comparisons between the approaches to reading used at home and school. Discussions of approaches to learning in a school context, for instance, frequently focus on teaching strategies such as the use of questions. 

Figure 6. 1: Use of different teaching strategies





Figure 6.1 above shows the relative frequencies of the different strategies used by mothers in reading interactions with their children. Questioning is by far the most commonly used teaching strategy, though extensive use is also made of instructions and explanations. The mothers spend relatively little time reading the actual text or reviewing and practising material, and only a small proportion of the interactions can be categorised as responses-positive or negative-to the children's reading. 

This preliminary quantitative analysis of the data, however, gives only a very limited picture of what is actually happening. In the discussion which follows, further data-quantitative and qualitative-will be presented on the teaching strategies of individual mothers. 

Reading aloud

In every case, the mothers interpreted the researcher's request to read with their children by selecting a lesson at an appropriate level from a standard Chinese textbook(see Chapter five: 115 for a sample text). As shown in figure 6.2  below, the proportion of the interactions where the mother was reading from the text varied between 1 and 11 Percent and corresponded closely with the level of experience of the child. Thus, for instance, Qinfang and Yongjing whose children were both reading from Book One, spent proportionately more time than the other mothers actually reading from the text. There was a clear expectation that children with more advanced reading skills would take greater responsibility for reading the text out loud themselves. 

Extracts from the transcripts of the reading interactions illustrate the ways in which the mothers were accommodating to their children's needs. In the case of Qinfang and Helen, an inexperienced reader, mother and daughter looked at the text together, with the mother pointing to each character with her finger, reading in a loud voice, and the daughter just following the text:

The little boat. The crescent moon, the little boat, the little boat has two ponted sides. I'm sitting in the boat, looking at the twinkling stars and the blue sky. 

Yongjing and Xiaoman, another inexperienced reader, approached this in a slightly different way: the mother read the text, then offered prompts and allowed the child to continue. Using the text in Xiaoman's Chinese book, the following sequence was enacted:

Yongjing: Fishing at the bank together. 

Xiaoman: ［repeats］ Fishing at the bank together. 

Yongjing: The little cat... 

Xiaoman: The little cat and the old cat fishing at the bank together were unlucky, they didn't even catch one fish. 

Yongjing: How... 

Xiaoman: How come there weren't any fish? Why couldn't I catch a fish?

Of all the children, only Xuge is still learning to read with the aid of pinyin, a romanised transcription first introduced into the People's Republic following writing reforms in 1956 (Sheridan, 1981: Horvath, 1991; see also chapter five). Her mother used the standard procedure: she read each word and then broke it up into the initial sound and the rest of the syllable. 

The third word is dang (clank), d-ang, dang. The fourth is tou (steal), t-ou, tou. The fifth is peng (bump), p-eng, peng.  

There is an interesting parallel here between well-established Chinese teaching approaches and more recent developments in the UK. Traditional phonics teaching in the UK focused on the relationship between individual sounds and letters. However, with the growing interest in phonological awareness(c.f. Goswami & Bryant, 1990), attention has shifted from individual sounds to onset (initial sounds) and rime (remaining sounds in word). 

Questions

The mothers made extensive use of questions. Figure 6.4 below shows that the proportion of  'points' in reading interactions which were categorised as questions ranged between 13 and 36 percent. Differences between the mothers seemed more related to individual style than to the level of experience of the child. Thus, of the two mothers who used the highest   proportion of questions, one had a child who was working on Book Six, the other's child was working on Book One. 





The main aim of the questions was clearly to elicit whether the children had understood either the background knowledge which informed the text as a whole, or the individual components-words, characters, sentences and paragraphs-which made it up. Questions can be further subcategorised, as set out in figure 6.4. 





Of the 139 questions, just under half(61) were about words and phrases.  Sometimes the mother asked the meaning of a word or phrase, for example,  'What does 大 话 da hua mean? What does 街 道 jie dao mean?' All five mothers made extensive use of this particular strategy. 

Often questions were about the composition of characters. On other occasions, the mothers asked questions to help the child extend or make a complete sentence:

Qinfang: Now you make a sentence with 看 见 kai jian [see, saw, seen]. I see... 

Helen: I see a dog. 

Qinfang: What is the dog doing?

Helen: Walking. See father. 

Qinfang: Can you see what he is doing?

Helen: Driving. 

Qifang: When?

Helen: A long time ago. 

Sometimes the questions are open-ended. Yongjing, for instance, wants to know which words Xiaoman thinks are difficult. More often, however, they were intended to elicit a particular response. 

Another important subcategory of questions focused on the use of measure words such as, 个 ge and 支 zhi, a feature of Chinese which causes widespread difficulty for children. Typical questions included:

Lili:  Can we say one ge (measure word) leave?

Yongjing: OK. Next exercise. For example: one zhi(measure word) pen. Can I say 'one ge book' ?

Some 14 percent of the questions concerned the use of measure words.  Such questions, however, were only used by the mothers of the younger children who were still in the process of acquiring this area of grammatical knowledge. 

The greater emphasis on questions concerning form rather than content is not surprising when we consider that most of the children in this study were relativeiy young and inexperienced readers. The nature of the Chinese writing system makes it necessary to give considerable attention to the composition and grouping of characters in the early stages of learning to read(Hudson-Ross & Dong, 1990; Sheridan, 1990). This difference in emphasis may well give rise to misunderstanding between teachers and pupils in British classrooms and there is evidence that this is indeed the case (Gregory, 1993a). 

With younger children, mothers paid more attention to the structure of characters; with older, more experienced readers, they tended to emphasise the structure and meaning of the text as a whole. Thus Jianqi, prepared ten-year-old Xuge for a more detailed look at the story of  '掩 耳 盗 铃 yan er dao ling ' [Stealing a ring by covering your ears] by asking him how many fables he could remember from before. Guiying asked her son who is working on Book 3,  'What's the general idea of the story?' Other questions were directed at specific parts of the story: Jianqi asks the meaning of the second paragraph and explored the feelings of the central character. 

This use of questioning was, however, relatively rare among mothers in the present study: less than 20 percent of the questions (25) explored children's understanding of the content. Even fewer (15 percent) addressed the children's own views on what they were reading. This practice is thus very different from what usually takes place in a mainstream school context where considerable emphasis is placed on encouraging children to relate their own experiences and opinions to the text which they are reading (Chambers, 1993; Graham & Kelly, 1997). 

Figure 6.4 above explored the different categories of questions. However, for an understanding of why and how the mothers ask the questions, we need to look more closely at the qualitative data. The mothers frequently drew on children's prior knowledge. In many cases, they made use of children's growing dominance in English to check their understanding of the Chinese text. Yongjing, for instance, read a section of the text: 'Sister said it looks like salt ［盐 yan］' and then asks Xiaoman,  'How do you say盐 yan in English?' Children, too, asked their mothers for an English gloss for a Chinese word or phrase on a number of occasions. At other times, the mothers appeal to children's general knowledge. Thus Yongjing asked Xiaoman what sheep eat to help her form a sensible sentence, and Lily asked Mary the names of the four seasons. 

Occasionally, mothers asked questions to engage their children's attention.  For example, Jianqi told Xuge that 掩 yan［cover］was a verb and then asked him,  'What is 掩 耳 yan er［cover ear］?' Xuge began to cover his ear to show that he had understood. Similarly when Qinfang asked Helen the meaning of twinkle, she gave a clue by opening and closing her fingers. 

These different strategies are not, of course, used in isolation but form part of a more coherent whole. Take the following extract from the transcript of Qinfang teaching her daughter. 

Qinfang: What's meaning of 弯 弯 wan wan ［crescent］?

Helen:  I don't know. 

Qinfang: What's the shape of the moon? You tell me what's the  shape of the moon?[Draws a crescent shape]. Is that  right? Do you think it's a crescent? When the moon  reaches the fifteenth day of the month, it's a crescent.  What's a crescent look like?

Helen:  A small boat. 

Qinfang: What's the meaning of twinkle? ［Opens and closes her  fingers to show twinkling］. 

Helen:  ［singing］Twinkle, twinkle, little star. 

Qinfang: Yes, the twinkling stars and the blue sky. You can say the crescent moon. What else can you say using wan wan ［crescent］?

Helen: The curved tail. 

Qinfang: You mean the cock's curved tail?

Helen: Yes. 

Clearly Qinfang was using a whole range of interrogative strategies to help her daughter understand the meaning of crescent: she asked direct questions, she appealed to prior knowledge, she made allusion to other bodies in the sky and she asked Helen to use the word in another context. 

Instructions

The mothers' teaching style was, without exception, very direct, with extensive use of instructions to the children which made it very clear what was expected of them. As we see in figure 6.5, the proportion of the reading interactions which were categorized as instructions ranged between 4 and 27 percent. As was the case in the analysis of questions above, the use of instructions seemed to vary according to the parents' individual style rather than the level of experience of their children.  

In the transcripts of the reading interactions, the following examples are typical of the instructions given by the mothers:

Jianqi: Yes, write the new words and make sentences. Repeat the story. It's better if you can recite the all text. Next time I'll ask you to think about your own experience, to say something about what you think after you read the story. Think about it after the class. Now repeat the story. 

Qinfang: Now read the test again. 

Yongjing: Now fill in all these words. 

Guiying: Now answer the question: What did the frog and the bird  argue about?

There are obvious similarities between this approach and African-American and African-Caribbean teaching styles. Heath (1983), for instance, examines the way in which the directness associated with Black language style sometimes gives rise to misunderstanding in a school situation. Middle class White teachers often express instructions in the form of questions; when working class White and African-American children then fail to comply, their teachers interpret their behaviour as undisciplined and disrespectful, Callender (1997) discusses the same phenomenon in a British context. Chinese children are normally considered obedient and polite, rather than disrespectful (see chapter four). This does not, however, remove the possibility that the very different discourse style of British teachers may give rise to cross-cultural misunderstanding in the classroom, and this is an area which would benefit from more research. 

Strategies for explaining

Explanation was another common strategy used by the mothers in the reading interactions. The proportion of the reading interactions categorised as explanations ranged from 11 to 33 percent. As was the case for instructions and questions, figure 6.6 below shows that there was no obvious relationship between the mothers use of explanations and the level of experience of the child, leading to the conclusion that variations in use are best attributed to the individual style and preferences of the mothers. 

Analysis of the transcripts indicated that explanations could be further subcategorised into statements and demonstrations. The different patterns of  behaviour are set out in figure 6. 7 below. 

It would seem, therefore, that there are very large differences in the ways in which the mothers offered explanations to their children. Guiying and Lili relied exclusively or almost exclusively on the use of statements; the other mothers use both statements and demonstrations. Again the mothers did not seem to be responding to the levels of experience of their children; rather their behaviour seemed to reflect their different styles. 

As was the case for questions and instructions, explanations are offered for many different reasons. Very much in instructional mode, the mothers sometimes anticipated children's difficulties and offered explanations spontaneously. Jianqi, for instance, in introducing the story of  'yan er dao ling, '  [Stealing a ring by covering your ears], began by pointing out that:

A fable explains things through a simple story. It uses metaphor, symbol and personification to show the truth or irony of the story.  Children like this form and accept it easily. 

On other occasions, explanations were offered when children are clearly experiencing difficulties. Thus Guiying clearly suspected that Guangyu did not know the meaning of 观 guan in the context of the story they were reading and offered the following explanation:

观guan means to look at, observe. It means sitting in a well and looking at the sky. 

Most often explanations took the form of a simple statement as in the examples above. However, one of the mothers, Guiying, also made very skilful use of analogy to help Guangyu understand a text in which a frog sitting in a well is talking to a bird. The frog believes that the sky is only as big as the part he can see from his vantage point down the well; he refuses to believe the bird who says it is very much bigger. Guiying expanded on the story, saying:

Another example is of an uneducated person who lives in the countryside. When he sees a television screen, he wants to know where the picture is coming from. When someone tells him it is carried by electric waves, he cannot believe it. He doesn't know that there is any such thing as electric waves because he has no education. 

She then makes explicit the point of the story:

When the frog is in the well he thinks the sky is the same size as the well. We're talking about people's attitudes here. Some people just don't believe things outside their experience. 

The second strategy used to explain elements of the text is demonstration, particularly in relation to how characters are written. Yongjing shows how 花 hua is written with a line, a sweep, a vertical line, a sweep and a right angle;  Qinfang demonstrates to Helen that 弯 弯 wan wan is written with two vertical lines first, then two dots. 

Quite often, the mothers use visualization techniques to help children fix a picture of the character in their memories. Thus, as Yongjing demonstrates, the character for 钓 diao (to fish), she draws attention to the hook on the left side, and reminds her that you use a hook to fish. Qinfang draws attention to the shape of the character 弯 弯 wan wan (crescent):

Wan wan[crescent] has got two pointed sides. ［Indicates the points on the crescent shape she has drawn］. It looks like a little boat. 

Qinfang explains 坐 zuo ［sit］in a similar way, 

One side is a person 人 ren, the other side is a person 人 ren. And then you write the 土 tu［soil］. That means two persons sit on the ground. This is the word 坐 zuo ［sit］. 

Mothers also used comparison to explain the text, when a child confused two words with similar meaning or similar appearance. For instance, Qinfang said to Helen: 'You wrote 白 bai ［white］. But this is 自 zhi (oneself).  One line is 白 bai, two lines is 自 zi. ' (c.f. Hudson-Ross & Dong, 1990:121). 

Review  &  practice

Between 4 to 15 percent of the interactions could be categorised as examples of review and practice. As indicated in figure 6.8 below, all the mothers used this strategy at some point when reading with their children, although its use appears to be linked more closely to individual teaching style than to children's level of experience. 

The use of this strategy is deeply embedded in Chinese education.  Confucius said 'You learn new things by reviewing what you know already ［温 故 而 知 新 wen gu er zhi xin］' (Legge, 1971), underlining the fact that review and practice strategies are a well-established feature of Chinese culture. Revision materials are on display in every bookstore in China.  Parents use these materials as the basis for the homework which will be used to reinforce the work which takes place in school. A score of 90 or 95 percent is considered necessary to demonstrate that a child has really understood and, in order to achieve a score of this magnitude, it is essential to keep doing exercises, to keep reviewing and practising. 

After explaining the text, mothers used several ways to encourage their children to practise what they had taught and also to remind them of what they already knew. As we have seen, Qinfang has taught the adjective crescent, which can be use to modify moon. She asked her daughter,  'What else can you say using crescent?' Qinfang also asked her to make sentences to practise individual words and sentence patterns with which she is already familiar. 

Some mothers also use more direct techniques to review what they have taught:

Guiying: Now say the meaning of these words-what does '坐 井 观 天 zuo jing guan tian ' mean?

Dictation was a common tool for helping children review what they had learned. Sometimes the mothers gave the dictation without prior discussion. However, on other occasions, they first drew attention to words from the lesson which they felt might cause difficulty and then included these in the dictation. 

Review and practice strategies were used at two main points in the reading interactions. Jianqi, for instance, used this approach at the beginning to help her son recall what he had learned in the previous lesson:

How many fables can you remember from before? What's a fable all about?

On most occasions, however, review and practice took place towards the end. Mothers often asked their children to paraphrase the text and check on whether they had understood what they had been reading. They also usually expected the children to do the exercises which followed the text to check if they had understood. These exercises most often consisted of answering questions about the content of text; comparing similar words and making sentences; filling in the blanks using words from the text; and practising characters. 

Responding to the children

Parents' responses-positive and negative-to children are another area of interest. As figure 6.9 below indicates, there were marked differences between the mothers.     

Guiying, for instance, made use only of praise strategies with her son.  Jianqi and Qinfang also made more frequent use of praise. Positive responses often took the form of yes or no or a simple evaluative comment:

Jianqi: Yes, one sentence. 

Wang  Qinfang: Now you write it again. [Daughter writes it again] Right. 

On other occasions, however, the praise was more enthusiastic:

Yongjing: Good. Do it again. Very good. 

I have already noted the direct nature of mothers' interactions with their child. There would seem to be a close relationship between the directness of these interactions and the mothers' use of praise. This is clearly a cultural phenomenon which has been noted in various other situations (Callender, 1997). Many of the mothers' responses to their children, including those cited above, might be perceived by a Western audience, at best, as unenthusiastic. 

It is also noteworthy that Lily and Yongjing made very critical comments to their children on a number of occasions. By the same token, these negative comments may seem unduly harsh to a western audience influenced by an educational philosophy which attaches great importance to the notion of a positive self-concept for success in learning. Comments such as those which followed were typical. 

Jianqi: No, not very good. You'd have a pause between each  paragraph. You should practise after class. 

Lili: You've already read all these in your English book. How  can you forget everything?

Yongjing: You didn't make a very good job of that. 

At no point during the sessions did the children challenge their parents' negative comments. This is very much in accordance with the belief that parents' actions are always in their children's best interests. Rashid and Gregory(1997: 112 - 13) describe a similar pattern in an account of a Bengali sister teaching her brother to read. 

Jamilla(sister) frequently corrects Maruf's mistakes as and when they arise, and has no fear of undermining his confidence. To the outsiders, her strategies may appear too probing for a young child...however;  knowledge of the community classes allows us to understand that these children are very comfortable with such structures. 

Problems can sometimes arise, however, when Chinese families live abroad and children are exposed to rather different cultural assumptions. Accounts written by children in the overseas edition of a Chinese newspaper make this point very clearly. Jiaou, who had been in Sweden for five years, described her experience of learning to play the violin thus:

My teacher is Swedish. She is patient, kind and friendly. Even when I sometimes play the tunes very poorly, she always encourages me: 'Good! Try it again.' ...My mother isn't nearly as nice as my teacher. When I make mistakes, she tells me off. She treats me very strictly. Sometimes she feels my posture is wrong, sometimes she complains that I am not using the bow as forcefully as I should. When I cheerfully play a new tune to her, she says,  'Why are you learning to play tunes instead of practising your scales?' I have to practise the boring 'open string' which my mother told me to do as something extra...It's so difficult to get my mum's praise. Now that I am getting older, I know my mum is strict because she wants me to be good. Perhaps if she was different I wouldn't be the best in the class. But if my mum gave me more encouragement, just like my teacher, probably I would be even better. Who knows? (People's Daily, overseas edition, 5) September 1997: 9)

Yao Yuan expresses a similar sentiment:

When I see other children playing under the sunshine, how I love it! But I have to do lots of Chinese exercises which they don't have to.  (People's Daily, overseas edition, 24 January 1998: 3)

Chinese parents, then, would seem to focus mainly on their children's long  term future.  In order to achieve their goal, they are prepared to be strict and even to use harsh words to spur their children on. Again a famous saying encapsulates this view: 'The cloth will get bigger and bigger and the band will get looser, but in the interest of study I don 't mind being thin and pallid.' Traditional views of study are so deeply engraved that they still inform the thinking of Chinese parents abroad.  For instance, Su(1997), a Chinese graduate student in the USA, describes how her five-Year old daughter protested one day that her mother was hurting her feelings. She admits that her first reaction was surprise that a five year old should have hurt feelings. Only on reflection did it occur to her that children's feelings may have been neglected in the thousand year history of parents as rulers and guardians of the truth. 

Conclusion

This chapter describes the efforts of Mainland Chinese families to help their children maintain high levels of achievement in both spoken and written Chinese. It leaves no doubt as to the very great urgency for children to keep pace with their peers in China so that they will be able to compete on equal terms on their return. Nor does it leave any doubt about the difficulty of this task: children who can spend only a few hours a week after school and at weekends cannot be expected to achieve the same levels as children whose entire education is conducted in Chinese.  The ambivalence of children is also clear to see: although few children approach the extra work with relish, there is seldom any doubt about the importance of what they are doing or of the fact that their parents have their best interests at heart. 

Several general points emerge from the analysis of Chinese mothers' reading with their children. The first concerns what counts as reading. The mothers take a highly structured instructional approach. They all interpreted the request to read with their children by working from a standard textbook rather than choosing a storybook and reading for pleasure. 

When reading the selected text, the mothers took a very direct approach, making extensive use of questions to ensure that children have understood the text as a whole as well as its component parts; giving clear instructions about what they expect the child to do; and offering explanations in the form of demonstration, statements and, in the case of one of the mothers, analogy. The emphasis is on the understanding of form and structure and close attention to the text, rather than on reader response and enjoyment, as is the case in British education. 

The mothers in the present sample are all well-educated but have no training in teaching, either in China or the UK. In this respect, the only experience which they can bring to the teaching of Chinese literacy is what they remember from their own schooling in China. At various points in the discussion, comparisons have been made between Chinese approaches to teaching with what takes place in mainstream British school. It would, of course, be more legitimate to make comparisons between the teaching strategies of Chinese mothers with British mothers; there were, however, neither the time nor the resources to explore this avenue as part of the present study. 

One final point can usefully be made about the teaching strategies of the five women in the present study. Although all the mothers adjusted to the needs and experience of their children when actually reading the text aloud, they also showed a great deal of variation in the degree to which they used the different strategies. Thus, while it is possible to make general statements about the approach of Chinese mothers to the teaching of reading, it is important to remember that they are by no means a homogeneous group. 

By looking in depth at what happens when five Mainland Chinese mothers set about teaching their children to read and write Chinese at home, it has been possible to show the strategies which are commonly used and the ways in which these vary both according to the needs and stage of development of the child, and the individual style of the mother.  Attention has been drawn to differences between Chinese and British approaches to the teaching of reading, and also to similarities with other cultures, including African-American, African-Caribbean and Bangladeshi. Discussion has focused in particular on the very direct teaching style of Chinese mothers and the ways in which they may seem very critical and negative to british observers. 

While the tensions generated between this approach and the approach of the school are acknowledged, alternative explanations of these behaviours have been offered. Such an understanding is clearly essential in multicultural, multilingual classrooms in the UK: teachers need to be aware of the differences in the literacy experiences of children from different cultural backgrounds and of the different expectations of parents for their children.