Family literacy in China.

Family literacy practices are important to children’s literacy development. This chapter reviews research on family literacy practices in China. The authors discuss the role of parental support and the home literacy environment on children’s learning of Chinese and the major home and family related factors that contribute to or impact Chinese children’s Chinese literacy development. Factors such as literacy resources available in homes, parents’ education level, parent–child literacy activities, and child home literacy activities have all been shown to be closely related to Chinese children’s literacy development. Another major finding is Chinese parents’ attitudes towards reading predict their children’s reading performance, and their attitudes, support, encouragement, and values relate to their children’s sense of competence and motivation to read. The authors also discuss implications of these findings, including encouraging parents to use oral language to support their children’s Chinese reading at home, to make various reading materials available in the home, and to model good reading practices for their children. Suggestions are made for further research on this topic.