Literacy learning in English and Chinese is a very important aspect of the educational experience of Chinese children in Britain. This chapter looks at reading in English and Chinese from a number of perspectives.  It first examines the reading process in English, reviewing the research literature on what happens when experienced and inexperienced readers approach the written word, and the methods of teaching reading which have developed in response to different models of the reading.  It also considers similarities and differences between the reading process in English and Chinese, and approaches to the teaching of literacy in a logographic writing system, both inside China and among the overseas Chinese. Finally, the cultural nature of reading will be discussed, together with the implications of different approaches to the written word for teachers in multilingual classrooms in the UK and beyond. 

The reading process

Western researchers have been trying to understand the reading process for over a hundred years. Traditionally, the main task of the reader was seen to be that of decoding the written word. The task of the teacher was therefore seen as helping children acquire the skills necessary for decoding, usually presented in a hierarchical order-letter, word, sentence, paragraph, text (Goodman, 1997). Since the mid 1980s, the emphasis has changed and, according to the psycholinguistic transactional model of reading, readers construct meaning. This more recent understanding grew largely out of miscue analysis which suggested that fluent readers use their knowledge of the sounds and structures of the language, as well as their knowledge of life and books, to predict what comes next (Goodman & Watson, 1987). 

Many other writers support this position. Watson et al (1979), for instance, propose that reading cannot be explained in terms of the skills of splintering language into small units of letters, sounds, syllables and words in isolation. Rather it is a  'whole language' process where meaning is constructed on the basis of the interrelationship of past experiences and the words in text. In a similar vein, Weddle(1981) described reading as the cognitive search for the meaning of a printed text and sees comprehension as an important element in the reading process. 

Goodman (1997) proposes that the way in which children learn written language is not significantly different from the way in which they learn oral language. Torrey (1969), Clark (1976), Bissex (1980) all argue that children have significant knowledge of reading and writing before they even begin formal instruction. In a similar vein, Goodman et al (1989)  and Nutbrown (1997) show that print awareness in environmental contexts plays an important role in the development of literacy in the pre-school years. 

The notion of reading as meaning construction which is supported by the writers reviewed above has, however, given rise to some dissent among neo-behaviourist writers such as Adams (1990) who attaches considerable importance to word recognition. The major differences between the two positions can be summarised in the following table:









Figure 5.1: Opposing views of the reading process(Based on Goodman, 1997)

Approaches to the teaching of reading in English

Various different practical approaches to the teaching of reading can be linked with these different theoretical positions. The more traditional phonics and  'Look and Say' are examples of methods which stress children's ability to decode; the more recent language experience and apprenticeship methods have developed from theories of fluent reading as the construction of meaning. 

Phonics method

Phonics can be defined as a variety of different teaching practices which draw attention to sounds and their relationship with letters. Children learn to identify different sounds associated with different letters by filling in missing letters, circling words and mapping objects to initial letters. The phonics method, however, has various disadvantages. For example, Moon(1994:65) refers to:

American research which attempted to construct a workable set of phonic rules. It identified 69 grapheme units in 6,000 words taken from books used by 6 and 7 year olds. Of these, 40-50 phonemes were represented with some degree of regularity by 211 different spellings. But 661 words, more than one in ten, had to be classified as 'exceptions', so 166 rules had to be devised to cover the remaining 5,431 words! Sixty of these rules were concerned with the pronunciation of consonants which we usually think of as having  'regular' pronunciations!

He concludes that it is clearly not possible to wait until children have been taught all the rules before letting them begin to read. 

Other problems have also been associated with phonics teaching (Redfern & Edwards, 1993; Edwards, 1995a). Some writers argue that the ability to identify different sounds varies between children. Generally speaking, boys are poorer than girls in this way are. Another difficulty relates to regional accents. In some areas  'thick' is pronounced as 'tick'  and 'brother' as 'bruvver' . Too heavy emphasis on phonics in these situations may lead to confusion (Redfern & Edwards, 1993). 

Recent research (Goswami & Bryant, 1990) suggests that systematic phonics teaching is more useful in the later than in the very early stages of learning to read, at which point activities such as segmenting words into syllables and looking at initial sounds which help reinforce phonological awareness are more appropriate.  

Look and say Method

'Look and say' is a method in which teachers use flashcards to teach children to recognise individual words. Children often take these cards home for further practice. The rationale for this approach is that once they have learned the words in isolation, they will be able to read a book which contains the words they have learned. 

This method has been criticised for various reasons. For instance, if children have a poor visual memory, they will make slow progress. The repetition involved in 'Look and say' can be very boring, and books with limited vocabulary can be extremely uninspiring. Finally, and most important, if children meet a new word, they may not have the strategies to attempt reading it. None the less, a basic sight vocabulary is recognised as essential before children's reading can take off. 

 Language experience method

Children are encouraged to write their own stories which are then used as reading material, a practice which can be very motivating. This approach is also helpful in allowing children to see the interrelationships between talk, reading and writing and to develop their sight vocabulary. 

The most popular commercial example of this method is Breakthrough to Literacy. 120 common words are printed on cards and stored in a special folder. Children are asked to compose their stories by placing these cards in plastic sentence making stands; they then copy the 'story' into their exercise book. Common criticisms of the Breakthrough approach are that it is very difficult to organise the cards and that children find the copying tasks boring. 

The Apprenticeship method

In an apprenticeship approach, children first read books under the guidance of the teacher, until they are confident to proceed on their own. 

Redfern & Edwards( 1993: 10 ) describe this method in the following terms:

The apprenticeship method builds on... experience of print, and on the knowledge of stories, language and life which children bring with them to school. The emphasis is on enjoying books, responding to the story and comparing it with their own experience. 

The child responds to the story, to the reader's intonation and questions, at the same time as offering ideas of their own. The responses and initiations on the part of the learner eventually lead to a stage where the reading is not just a shared activity in which the adult and the child read together but where each contributes to the reading from the text (Waterland, 1985). Subsequently the child takes on an even more important role within the interaction and the adult listens to the child's reading. Campbell (1990: 2) describes the four stages of reading in the following way:

Story reading - adult reads to children

Shared reading - adult and child read together

Hearing children read - child reads to adult

Sustained silent reading - child reads to self. 

The apprenticeship approach has been criticised for lacking structure. However, schools which use the apprenticeship method will also have a well-planned programme for teaching children the range of strategies which they will need if they are to become fluent readers. 

The literature contains many examples of the kinds of strategies which children need to acquire. The importance of developing prediction skills which enable inexperienced readers to attempt unknown words is a recurrent theme(Rhodes, 1976; Burke, 1980; Weddle, 1981: Watson, 1986). Writers such as Moon & Raban(1992) and Edwards & Redfern (1992) suggest a number of responses to this situation:

●Encourage the children to predict what will happen according to the clues from illustration or the content they just have read. 

●Ask the children to read carefully about the end of a sentence and then come back to the word which they don't know. 

●Show the children the first letter of the word or show them part of  the word.

●Give the children a word to let them continue their story. 

A further example of strategy development concerns teacher response when a child makes a miscue or substitution for what actually appears in the text. There is general consensus that the most important principle in this situation is not to intervene if the substitution makes sense and doesn't affect the meaning of the story. If the teacher intervenes, the message which the child will be receiving is that reading is about accuracy rather than making meaning. In situations where the meaning is not changed, the most appropriate approach is thus to let the child continue uninterrupted. However, if a child makes a miscue which changes the meaning of the text, the only course of action available to the teacher is to draw the child's attention to the departure from the text, possibly using one of the strategies outlined above for helping children when they meet a word which they do not recognise. 

A mixture of methods

Different approaches to the teaching of reading are clearly influenced by different theoretical understandings of the reading process. However, there is a general consensus that, while fluent reading involves the active interaction of the reader with the text, children must also develop their sight vocabulary and have access to a range of phonological strategies. 

The prevailing wisdom, then, is that teachers need to understand each child's individual needs before deciding which method-or mixture of methods-is most appropriate. These decisions will be based partly on a knowledge of children's skills and strategies. For instance, what is their previous experience of the written word? Are they competent at decoding? Do they understand at the literal level or beyond the literal? Do they have selection and information retrieval skills? But such decisions will also take into account a knowledge of children's attitudes towards reading. Are they willing to read? Are they motivated, confident and critical? Do they expect to enjoy reading? The teacher's responsibilities are thus seen in terms not only of choosing materials and monitoring children's progress, but also of providing experiences relating to the processes of reading and concrete strategies of meaning making. 

The reading process in Chinese

A major theme in the literature on the reading process in Chinese is the extent to which alphabetic and logographic writing systems make different demands on readers. Alphabetic writing is commonly assumed to be easier to learn and more efficient(Burnaby 1997). However, there is no shortage of evidence to suggest that this position represents a gross oversimplification. Various writers focus, for instance, on the fact that children learning to read alphabetic systems experience difficulty in mapping phonemes, which are essentially abstract units, to letters.  Evidence from both speech output (articulation) and input (perception) suggests that the phonemes which underlie alphabetic writing systems are highly abstract concepts (Tunmer, 1997). Challenging conventional wisdom about the relative difficulty of different writing systems, Rozin et al(1971) points out that English children experiencing difficulties with conventional writing can easily learn to read English represented by Chinese characters. 

In a Japanese context, both Leong (1973) and Makita(1976) have challenged the notion that memorizing Chinese characters or kanji is more difficult than memorizing words in an alphabetic writing system. It is often claimed that a minimum of 3,000 Chinese characters and 1,850 Japanese kanji must be learned in order to become functionally literate, whereas in an alphabetic system only the letters need to be learned. Makita (1976), however, points out that being able to associate letters and sounds does not equate with literacy. Both Leong and Makito indicate that kanji are formulated in a systematic way and that the radicals often give hints to the meaning of the characters. 

Wai(1981) also attempts to show the systemacity of Chinese characters, pointing out that many of the same components reappear in different formations in different characters. Simple and complex characters both occupy the same fixed-sized square space. Usually those characters which are complicated in stroke and radical formation may be difficult to write, but easier to recognize than the simpler ones because of the fixed space occupied. Each fixed square space is always one syllable. These characteristics reduce the complexity of Chinese character pronunciation and recognition. 

There are many indications that the early stages of reading in Chinese can be very different. In a study of first and fifth grade children in Minneapolis, USA and Taipei(Taiwan), Lee et al(1986) show that the best readers of English can read more words than the best readers of Chinese. In reading Chinese, children cannot guess or deduce the pronunciation and meaning of characters and have to depend upon some external source to know the sound and meaning of the word. So Chinese beginning readers are less dependent on phonetic decoding than their English counterparts. Because of this, Chinese character learning depends strongly on memory, while learning to read in English emphasises children's understanding of the relation of symbol to sound. It seems that alphabetical writing systems make greater conceptual demands on beginners. Watkins & Biggs(1996: 271)conclude that  'the nature of learning to read and write text with a character system is a more complex, memory-dependent task than is reading and writing with an alphabet system'. In a similar vein, in an investigation of children's understanding of the formal and functional aspects of written Chinese, Chan (1998) argues that learning to read and write in Chinese not only involves the rote memorization of individual characters, but also develops an understanding of the underlying rules of written Chinese.  

Wai (1981) draws attention to the different pathways to meaning taken by English and Chinese readers. Liu(1978: 153-154) represents these pathways visually in figure 5.2 below: for English the path is mediated or indirect; for Chinese it is immediate or direct. 

Figure 5. 2: Relation of orthographies to meaning (Liu, 1978: 154)



Both routes have advantages and disadvantages. The number of graphemes used to encode sound distinctions in English is small and can be learned relatively quickly. Children who have mastered the notion of a mediated pathway can read or write anything in their spoken vocabulary. However, Chinese orthography also has advantages. Chinese graphs allow the readers to get the meaning directly. Going via the sound in alphabetic writing can lead to an  'auditory lag', reducing reading speed and hindering comprehension. This direct path to meaning is obviously helpful for readers who find it difficult to go from graph to sound. 

Much of the early research on reading in Chinese concentrates on visual discrimination. In a study of reading processes of proficient readers in many languages, Gray (1960), for instance, found that the eye movement of readers in Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese revealed a longer fixation than most of the languages studied. Attempts have also been made to link visual discrimination with success in reading. Goins (1958) found that tests which involve visual perception of geometric figures or pictures have a relatively high correlation with reading achievement in the first grade. In a study of the relative importance of reading readiness, intelligence and visual perceptual skills, Bryan(1965) also reports that visual perception correlated more closely with first-grade reading success than the other two factors. The findings of Barret (1965) and Evanechko otal (1973) are also consistent with those of earlier studies. 

The preoccupations of researchers coincides with those of classroom practitioners. Gibson (1969), for instance, observes that 'much emphasis in early school grades is on the learning of discrimination of representations (pictures and symbols)'. Writers such as Thonis (1970), Rozin et al (1971), Nelson and Ladan (1972), Gagne (1977) and Wai (1981) also stress the importance of visual discrimination training. However the findings on the effects of training programs in visual perceptual skills on reading achievement have been at best contradictory. Some writers, including Simpson (1960), Rutherford (1964), Faustman (1966) and Alley (1968)  report positive results; others, including Rosen (1966), Arciszewski (1968), Keim (1968) and Falik (1969), find no significant differences as a result of training on reading achievement or readiness. Wai(1981: 61) sums up the situation thus:

As a whole, the correlation studies reviewed revealed a highly positive relationship between visual-perception skills and reading achievement. Yet a cause and effect relationship between these visual skills and the reading success cannot be established through studies of the effects of training which were targeted specifically at certain aspects of visual perceptual skills. It may be that while the absence of adequate visual perceptual skills may hinder a child's ability to succeed in reading, further training of students with adequate skills may not result in additional gains. 

Researchers have continued to explore perceptual aspects of reading logographic writing systems. Tzeng & Wang(1983), for instance, focus on the processes used by readers in a series of experiments based on the Stroop interferences task in which colour names are written in an ink of a different colour and subjects are asked to name the colour of the ink. The expected result would be that it takes much longer to name colours with distracting labels than a series of unmarked colour patches. When the researchers undertook this experiment with readers of alphabetic, syllabic and logographic scripts, they discovered that the difference between the time taken to name the colour with the distracting word and the time taken to name the colour of the unmatched patch was much greater for readers of logographic scripts than it was for readers of alphabetic scripts and syllabaries. They conclude that their findings support the notion that the relationship between script and speech plays an important part in reading behaviour:

A reader of a particular script must assimilate the orthographic characteristics of that system. That is to say, if the configuration of a logograph is important in deciphering it, then the reader has to pay special attention to the position of every element it contains. As a consequence, we should expect the processing of logographs to involve more visual memory than the processing of alphabetic script(p241). 

There is some evidence that this is the case. Tzeng & Wang (1983), for instance, discovered that, when presented with a series of nine items both visually and auditorily, Chinese readers consistently recalled the items better when they were presented visually, although there was no such difference for English readers. It seems probable; then, that processing logographs involves more visual memory than does processing alphabetic scripts. Such findings also point to the possibility that reading different scripts uses different mechanisms of memory which are specific to different scripts. 

Support for this position was found by using a tachistoscope (or T-scope) to investigate the specialisation of functions of the two cerebral hemispheres. Prior research in this area (e.g. Patterson & Bradshaw 1975) suggests that the left hemisphere is better able to analyze sequences, while the right hemisphere is better at matching visual patterns. Tzeng & Wang (1983) found that, for alphabetic and syllabic languages, a right visual field superiority is consistently found, whereas Chinese readers show left visual field superiority, at least when presented with single logographs. The evidence of experiments in this area with Japanese readers whose orthography draws on both logographic and syllabic writing systems, is particularly persuasive. When processing logographs, they demonstrated left visual field superiority; when processing words written with syllabic 'kana' they demonstrated right visual field superiority. 

It would therefore seem that visual processing is more important in recognising logographs and that, as a result, the involvement of the right hemisphere is greater. However, in Chinese two or more logographs may be placed together to form a word, and Tzeng & Wang(1983) found right visual field superiority in Chinese readers operating at the sentence level. It would seem that the initial perceptual pathways may be different, but that later processing may converge on similar linguistic techniques. Biederman & Taso (1979) suggest that Chinese characters invoke meaning much faster than do words in an alphabetic language. 

The considerable emphasis on visual discrimination may, however, have detracted attention from the role of phonological encoding even in logographic writing systems. Chen & Juola(1982) have demonstrated a high degree of association between visual encoding strategies in short-term memory and Chinese. Hayes (1988) indicates that, for native readers of Chinese, phonological representation of words in short-term memory is the same as for native readers of alphabet-based languages. 

Erickson et al(1973), for instance, demonstrates that, even in reading Japanese kanji, which have no overt phonetic structure, phonetic short-term storage occurs. Mae Chu-chang and Loritz (1977) explore how Chinese learners of English encode ideographic writing and English writing in short-term memory. When phonetic, sematic and visual distracter lists were used to test for recall of Chinese and English words, they found that more errors were made with phonetically similar Chinese characters and visually similar English words. They conclude that, for proficient readers, encoding in short-term memory is phonological, irrespective of the writing system. They also suggest that the higher number of errors on the visual list in English reading is probably due to the use of a more visual strategy of shape-to-meaning association which has been transferred from the reading of Chinese. As Wai (1981) points out, although there may be evidence that phonological strategies are universally applied by proficient readers, this does not preclude initial differences in information processing of different types of orthography. Hudson-Ross & Dong (1990: 117) make an interesting observation:

Whereas children reading in a phonetic language such as English learn to derive the meaning of a new word by deciphering first letters, then sound, and finally meaning, the Chinese language requires a different approach: first character, then meaning and finally sound. As a result, it is common to see an American student read a new word out loud to check it out by ear. A Chinese student, on the other hand, will sketch a character in the air or on his or her hand to unravel a puzzling phonogram. 

Teaching children to read and write in China

Article 12 of Education Act (State Education Commission of the People's Republic of China, Beijing 1995) recommends that:

The spoken and written Chinese (Han) language shall be the basic teaching language in schools and other types of educational institutions. Putonghua(common speech of the Chinese language) and the standardised characters that are in common use in the whole country shall be popularised and used for instruction in schools and other types of educational institutions. 

 The Chinese language is written with some 25,000 characters. However, the standard Chinese dictionary 中 华 大 字 典 zhong hua da zi dian (1916) contains over 48,000 written characters (Li,1994). In order to read fluently, Chinese children have to learn between two and three thousand characters. 

Teachers in elementary schools have to find effective ways of getting the children to correctly pronounce and also make meaning of the characters. Different areas have different teaching methods. In Hong Kong, no pronunciation aids are used in learning characters. Teachers read the characters to children, and the children are expected to remember what they have been told. However, in a British context, Wong (1991a) recounts how Hong Kong Chinese children provide their own roman transcriptions to help them remember characters. In Taiwan, 注 音 符 号 zhuyin fuhao, a phonetic spelling system, is used primarily for teaching new characters.  In China, 拼 音 pinyin is used for this purpose (see chapter two). 

Chinese first-grade students learn pinyin for several weeks before they begin to learn characters. They first learn the names of the consonants, e. g. b (bou), P (pou), m (mou), f (fou), followed by vowels, eg.a, o, e; diphthongs, eg.i.e., iao; and vowels in combination with final nasals, eg eng, ong. Finally attention is paid to the four tones. Syllables are divided into two parts which are usually referred to in discussions of Chinese as the initial and the final but which correspond to the onset and the rime in the literature on phonological awareness(cf Goswami & Bryant, 1990). For instance, when pronouncing the syllable qing, students say /q/, /ing/, /qing/. 

The usual sequence followed in the teaching of reading in Chinese schools is:(a) pinyin-only texts; (b) parallel character / pinyin texts(see Figure 5.3); and(C) character-only texts. In the early stages of learning, students are also encouraged to write sentences in pure pinyin or pinyin with some characters. 

Figure 5. 3: A page from a standard Chinese textbook




According to Liu(1978: 152), 

By the end of second grade, students learn to spell and pronounce syllables in pinyin and to utilise pinyin in learning new words and correcting local accents. In third grade, students use pinyin in looking up words in the dictionary and in reading simple texts written in pinyin. Fourth grade and upward students read texts in pinyin without difficulty and can transcribe easily. Upon entering junior high, students are expected to have mastered pinyin. 

The main aim of  learning pinyin is to give students an element of autonomy from the teacher. As Dai (1985) points out, some people consider that 'use of pinyin can enable a student to read Chinese characters correctly, as well as help comprehension of meaning and retention of form' . 

After the initial stages of learning pinyin, children begin to learn characters by identifying the shape. Teachers help them to analyse the structure and component parts. First, students learn the different kinds of strokes, such as lines, sweeps, angles and hooks; then they learn the proper sequence. They also need to learn the structure of characters.  For example: 妈 (mother) is formed from left and right; while for 早 (early) the structure is from top to bottom, etc. 

Children move from individual characters to words, phrases and sentences. By the end of the sixth grade, they are expected to know about 3, 000 characters, enough for ordinary reading(Hudson-Ross, 1990; Sheridan, 1990). The conventional Chinese approach to the teaching of reading is thus closest to the  'Look and say approach' used in the teaching of reading in English: essentially it involves identifying isolated words and memorising their sound and meaning. 

For children learning to read and write English, the challenge is to segment the stream of speech into phonemes and to determine the ways in which different graphemes are related to these phonemes. For Chinese children learning to read, the challenges are rather different: even when they know the meaning of a character in isolation, they will not necessarily recognise its meaning when it occurs in combination with other characters. They need to determine which characters should be grouped into meaningful word units. For example, 

1. 他坐, 不好. Ta zuo (, ) bu hao. 

That he sits is not good ［i.e. he had better not sit. ］

2. 他坐不好. Ta zuo bu hao. 

He does not sit well. 

Here the placement of a comma completely changes the meaning of the sentence. Another example,

3. 落雨天留客, 天留我不留. Luo yu tian liu ke (, ) tian liu wo bu liu. Rainy day prevents guest from leaving. Guest can't go because of the weather, not becuase host wants him to stay. 

4. 落雨天, 留客天, 留我不, 留. Luo yu tian (, ) liu ke tian (, )  liu wo bu (, ) liu. 

It is raining and host wants the guest to stay. 

Two other areas of difficulty have been noted for children learning to read Chinese. The first affects Chinese words with the same pronunciation but different meaning which would indeed suggest that there is an element of phonological encoding even in a logographic writing system. Leong (1973), for instance, reports that only 21 percent of a sample of 15, 000 children were able to correctly distinguish between 'ren' 仁 (kind) and 'ren' 人 (man), words with the same pronunciation and tone. Children also experience difficulty with characters which are similar in shape but different in meaning, such as 白  'bai', 自 'zi': 由 ‘you', 田 'tian' (c.f. chapter six). 

The logographic nature of the writing system and the phonological and grammatical structure of Chinese are necessarily reflected in the different emphases in the teaching of reading which are found in Chinese classrooms. Other differences are also to be found which are probably more closely related to Chinese educational philosophy than to distinct writing systems. Cortazzi and Jin(1996), for instance, provide an interesting description of the approach to the written word in Chinese kindergartens, where classes of between 25 and 30 children usually have at least one teacher and one teaching assistant. The emphasis is very much on group activities, repetition, memorization and close interrogation of the text:

Children of four to five years old sit on the floor in circles learning to read Chinese.... characters for animals. On the wall there is a poem about a little fat pig. The teacher reads it several times, then children read it in chorus. Individual children come to the front and read it, fluently, with loud confident voices. The teacher produces cards with questions written on them. The whole class reads the questions and individual children find the answers in the poem.  The teacher does not give immediate feedback but first asks the class if the answer is correct or not. If it is, everybody claps in a collective evaluation of the answer. The teacher now divides the class into groups and gives each group cards with individual characters on them. The group task is to sequence the cards to make one of the sentences of the poem. This requires memory and group co-ordination. The teacher is using the task for a collective assessment of reading rather than for practice (p175). 

Within this setting there is an expectation that all children will achieve the same level, with peers or the teacher helping slower members of the class. The whole class works on the same material at the same speed.  Children are consistently on task, listening and speaking together in chorus. The teacher moves on to review cards used in previous lessons, with questions about animals such as  'What are the tail, eyes and ears of a dog like?' Children read the questions aloud in chorus and individually and offer answers. The pace is brisk with a change of activity

—a song, a dance movement around the room, matching characters, etc

—every three of four minutes. 

Cortazzi & Jin (1996) complement this description of the early approach to the teaching of reading with a discussion of a reading lesson for ten- year-olds in a class containing over 60 children. Teaching is based around a standard textbook and approximately three hours are spent on each text:

The reading lesson begins with all the learners reading aloud at their own pace. The text is about how squirrels build nests. They have prepared this reading for homework; everybody's textbook is full of pencilled notes. They are familiar with most of the routines which follow: reading aloud in rows and individually, with expression, following the teacher's model; literal comprehension questions from the teacher; looking at sentences highlighted on overhead transparencies(OHTs) to analyse the grammar; watching a video extract of squirrels moving and building nests, linked to choice of verbs; using more OHTs to see how adverbs modify meanings in the nest-building sequence; completing a written sequencing exercise with linking words; marking topic divisions in the text; reviewing the video to compose a paragraph using linking words; work in pairs to complete another paragraph; an explanation from the teacher about paragraph types, followed by classifying the paragraphs in the textbook (P.177). 

As we will see in chapter six, the teaching strategies described by Cortazzi & Jin (1996) exert a strong influence on the ways in which Chinese children are taught to read and write at home and in the community. 

Learning Chinese literacy in other settings

Some attention has been paid to the effectiveness of different approaches to the teaching of reading in Chinese outside China. In a study of L2 readers of Chinese, Hayes (1987) suggests that teachers should give students a sound foundation in speaking Chinese before working with characters. Thus, if students have already developed phonological inferencing skills, this will reduce their dependence on the printed character. 

The prevailing philosophy and practice in Chinese classrooms is thus much closer to the skills approach to the teaching of reading than to the strategies approach. Nonetheless, some recent research on Chinese children learning to read outside the People's Republic China takes on board the issues related to meaning construction in reading. Lee (1990: 58), for instance, shows that young children in Taiwan are also aware of environmental print and suggests that teachers should 'facilitate the process of construction knowledge about written language found in young children' and  'provide print settings with full contextual clues which are as natural as possible to the actual print setting. ' 

Lee(1990) draws attention to the importance of the developmental landmark which she terms the  'one-to-one concept' whereby 'children know that a syllable in oral form is represented by a character in written form' . It is difficult to arrive at the exact meaning of individual characters and that it is only when characters are combined into words that readers have access to sufficient semantic information to be able to decode. She therefore suggests that when children already possess the concept of word, teachers stop focusing attention on the smaller units of the character. 

More recently, the focus has moved from what is different in the reading process for different scripts to what is similar: readers of logographic scripts are able to use a range of other semantic and syntactic cues as to what lies ahead in exactly the same way as readers of alphabetic and syllabic scripts. In a study of four Chinese children learning to read, Chang (1987) finds extensive evidence that children used both linguistic cues and their knowledge of the world in reading Chinese materials and that they experience greater success when using predictable materials, defined in terms of their use of repetitive structures(redundancy), rhyme, match between illustrations and text, cumulative patterns and familiarity. 

Chang draws attention to the importance of whole language meaning-centred activities in helping children focus on meaning when reading. For example, children can be encouraged to relate their experiences to the text and to predict what will come next before they pay attention to the ideographs. He recommends the use of materials which relate to children's background and experiences and which use common Chinese sentence structures, repetition, cumulative patterns, rhymes, a good match between illustrations and text. 

Chang (1987: 19) summarises six different steps in working with texts:

1. Initial language experience: the teacher stimulates the children's  thought and invites them to talk about their prior knowledge and  experiences related to the content of a Chinese predictable story. 

2. Questioning and semantic expectation: in order to construct the author's message, the teacher uses questioning and dialogue. 

3.  Demonstration of reading: the teacher reads the story aloud. 

4.  Assisted reading: the teacher assists the children in reading the  story. 

5. Independent reading: the children are encouraged to take a risk in  order to read the story in a small group or individually. 

6.  Extensive literature work: the children are encouraged to relate  their predictable stories to the subject of the class, either by  speaking, drawing or writing. 

Though the reading process occurs in similar ways across cultures, the differences between the Chinese and English writing systems necessitates some adaptation in the use of the prediction strategies and predictable materials. 

Gregory(1993a) describes the problems which can arise when Chinese children exposed to traditional assumptions about the teaching of reading are faced with the very different practices and expectations of British classrooms. She describes the dilemma which faces Tony, a child whose family has come from Hong Kong, starts school in the UK. British teachers attach great importance to the enjoyment of books. They encourage risk taking and are happy for children's attempts at writing to gradually approximate to conventional usage; they do not insist on accuracy. The Chinese model, however, expects children to learn to write characters before reading books or stories. Chinese people are proud of the complex, aesthetic nature of their script, knowledge of which is considered an integral part of cultural identity. Tony's family, unfamiliar with the British approach, are horrified by his early attempts at learning to write, which include a drawing labelled 'Tony'. For them, this is an example of the very low expectations of the school. Over time, Tony rejects his teacher's attempts to help him: he shows a preference for Chinese methods, focusing on individual words rather than trying to predict what comes next. Gregory (1993a) contrasts the largely functional Chinese approach with the British emphasis on reading for pleasure and encouraging children to experiment rather than concentrate on word accuracy. 

Reading and Culture

Cultural literacy relates to the experiences and background knowledge which are necessary if readers are to fully comprehend texts. It emphasises the ability to bring a political interpretation to the content of reading and writing(William & Snipper, 1990). This view is mirrored by many other writers. Schieffelin(1986: viii), for instance, describes literacy  'as a way of knowing, a way of  'speaking' , an economic necessity, a cognitive advantage, a political excuse.' She argues that, from a social perspective, literacy is always related to its cultural consequences; as such it is a phenomenon which is impossible to examine  'objectively'. Literacy, then, can no longer be viewed simply as a set of skills to be acquired; rather it is a cultural phenomenon which needs to be examined with a social context. It also entails language behaviours and social episodes and needs to be viewed within a framework of interpersonal and cultural characteristics.  

Heath(1983) played a key role in drawing our attention to the ways in which different groups interact with text in a small town in South Carolina, USA. In the Black community, for instance, the emphasis is on reading to learn rather than on learning to read-following instruction books so that you can assemble a piece of equipment or read the price tag on something that you are interested in buying rather than reading for pleasure, In this community, reading is a social activity, as people read extracts from the newspaper on the porch. People who read alone are considered anti-social. Differences in cultural assumptions about the nature of reading between home and school have also been discussed in a wide range of other settings (see, for instance, Moll et al., 1992, Freebody et al., 1996; Serpell, 1997; Hannon, 1998). 

Gregory(1993b; 1996b) describes the teaching of Bengali in community classes in East London and in a family setting, respectively while Weinstrein-Shr & Quintero(1995) discuss the situation of immigrant learners and their families in a US context. 

Chinese has a rich and ancient literature. The written word has traditionally been held in very high respect. Whereas literacy used to be the privilege of a powerful elite, great strides have been made in recent times: the proportion of illiteracy fell from over 80 percent before 1949 to 20 percent in 1987 (Robinson 1991). The Chinese also attach great importance to their tradition of calligraphy. As Wong (1990: 19) points out  'the aesthete poet brushes calligraphic poems on the silk and paper they invented'. A distinction is made between the everyday script and the  'beautiful' or 'educated script' which is attained only by a very few. The skilled calligrapher is held in the same esteem as an accomplished artist, musician or poet. This point is made very clearly by Chang (1991: 169) in her account of three generations of Chinese women between 1909 and 1978. She describes the early days of her parents' courtship in the following terms:

My father wrote some beautiful poems for my mother... Not only were they in very elegant classical style, which was a considerable accomplishment, but she discovered that he was a good calligrapher, which raised him even higher in her esteem. 

Cultural assumptions about Chinese literacy are, of course, central to the present study. 

Learning to read in English multicultural classrooms

The new understanding of what are called variously new literacies, multiple literacies and social literacies is beginning to have an impact on classroom practice. Since the mid 1980s there has been increasing interest in ways of supporting non-English speakers who are learning to read and write in English. Few writers deal directly with the situation of Chinese children learning to read and write in English, though many of the more general issues raised in the literature also apply to Chinese children. 

Wallace (1986) examines the uses of literacy in a West London community and the reading process for the second language learner.  She discusses learning to read from sociolinguistic and psycholinguitic perspectives drawing on case studies of young and adult bilinguals who are learning to read in second language. 

Williams & Snipper (1990) view students' language background-English or other - not as problems that inhibit literacy but as rich assets upon which strong academic futures may be built in USA. They analyze the cognitive factors related to literacy and bilingualism, from the point of view of teachers and prospective teachers; they examine what constitutes literacy, emphasizing the social nature of literacy rather than individual skills; and they discuss how to use bilingual aides effectively in the classroom. 

Gibbons (1991) includes a chapter on the teaching of reading in multilingual classrooms in Australia. She discusses issues such as choosing and sharing books, developing sight words, teaching letter-sound relationships, and using children's own writing. She also mentions the need to extend the semantic context and the importance of understanding cohesion in texts. 

Day (1993) offers a range of practical suggestions contributed by teachers in ESL and EFL classrooms around the world for teaching reading to second language learners. These include techniques for increasing students' knowledge of English through exposure to new vocabulary and grammatical structures; and learning about the cultures of other nations. 

More recently attention has been focussed more particularly on the social and cultural experiences of literacy which children bring with them to school. Edwards (1995a), for instance, provides a brief overview of literacy learning in African-American, maktab and Chinese contexts;  Edwards (1995b) has a short discussion of writing and culture. 

Gregory (1996a), in the most comprehensive British treatment of this subject to date, draws attention to the inter-relationships between talk, experience and reading in a second language and stresses the important links between social and cognitive aspects of learning. Drawing on discussions with children and their families, and observation and recording of classroom interactions, she argues that an understanding of the strategies which children use in learning to read is essential if the teacher is to successfully scaffold learning. 

One child, many worlds(Gregory, 1997) is a collection of twelve papers which, between them, examine the implications of cultural and linguistic differences for young children entering school in Britain, Germany, Iceland, Australia and the USA. They look at factors such as the role of care givers, siblings and community language classes and discuss ways in which the teacher can mediate the new language and culture of the school. 

Gregory(1998) also provides further valuable examples of the ways in which children's reading strategies at home can be supported in school.  She presents an analysis of reading sessions taking place in a group of Bangladeshi origin families living in London and shows ways in which older siblings provide finely-tuned  'scaffolding' closely adjusted to the reading ability of the individual child. By comparing home and school reading sessions, she is able to show that if teachers have a detailed knowledge of linguistic minority children's home reading patterns, they will be able to build more successfully upon their existing learning strategies. 

In a similar vein, Edwards(1998: 54) argues that many children in multilingual classrooms have a very wide range of experiences and attitudes towards the written word. British teachers therefore need to appreciate that their approach to reading is one among many.  

While it is clearly impractical to adopt different approaches for different children, it can be helpful to use a variety of approaches for all children; in this way they extend their experiences of learning in different contexts and for different purposes. 

Edwards also suggests that teachers explain to parents precisely the rationale for their approach to the teaching of reading. 

Rashid & Gregory(1997) argue that British teachers should pay more attention to the enjoyment the children have during the reading process. They encourage children to express their opinions on texts and stress individual pleasure. MRC (1995) and Edwards (1995a, 1998) extend the discussion by examining the possibilities for children to read not only in English but in community languages. Children have the ability to transfer a whole range of skills from one language to learning in another, including literacy learning. Bilingual teachers, support teachers, classroom assistants and parents can encourage children's literacy development in all their languages. And even monolingual teachers are able to promote multiple literacies in a number of ways, such as providing books, dictionaries and posters, either in single language or dual language format and encouraging children to make, read and share books in other languages with the help of bilingual adults or more experienced peers. For this reason it is important to include information on children's experience of literacy in all their languages in school admission forms. Assessment information should also include records of children's progress in all languages. 

The need for teachers to find out as much as possible about the children in their care does not, of course, apply solely to approaches to the teaching of reading. Edwards(1998), for instance, emphasises the importance for teachers of background knowledge of the children that they teach, such as the sociolinguistic situation in the country of origin, writing systems, naming systems and religion. She argues that this information  'is clearly very important for central aspects of school life, such as admissions procedures and assessment'(p10). She also suggests that the curriculum should reflect this information. For instance, exploring different languages or naming systems can be treated as part of language study, a central element of the national curriculum for English. 

Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to review the differences and similarities in the reading process in Chinese and English. It has also described the approaches to the teaching of literacy in English and in the logographic writing systems used both inside China and among the overseas Chinese. It has pointed both to the many similarities in the reading process irrespective of the script, and to differences which can be traced to the different writing systems. 

The issues reviewed in the present chapter will form the basis for the exploration of reading in chapter six which looks at the ways in which parents support their children's literacy learning at home and chapter seven which considers literacy learning in a community school context.  An important emphasis in the present discussion has been the cultural nature of reading. Whether in a British or a Chinese context, literacy learning does not simply involve the development of a set of skills;  expectations of the uses of literacy and the ways in which reading and writing are taught differ in important respects from one group to another.  Recent research points to an urgent need for teachers in mainstream schools to understand that their approach to the teaching of reading is one among many and to the importance of being sensitive to the experiences of literacy which children bring with them to school. An important theme which will be developed in subsequent chapters is the perspectives of Chinese parents on their children's literacy learning in schools and the ways in which new understandings of learning to read must be negotiated between home and school.