The Effect of Four Different Approaches to Parent-Child Reading on Young Chinese Children’s Reading

Forty families with four- to five-year-old Chinese children were chosen as experiment participants and equally divided into four groups for an eight-week parent-child reading experiment in different reading modes. (1) Groups A, B, and C read one of three kinds of Chinese-English audio bilingual picture books respectively: touch reading books, electronic books, and printed books + CDs, 30 minutes per day with their parents in the approach of Early Synchronous Bilingual Reading (ESBR). After the eight-week experiment, children participants cultivated good habits of and interest in reading and their reading comprehension, retelling and expression competence were improved significantly. Performance of each group in weekly reading time and frequency, proportion of recognized Chinese and English words was A>B>C>>D and differed significantly (p