Family learning environment and early literacy: A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children

B-Tier
Journal: Economics of Education Review
Year: 2014
Volume: 39
Issue: C
Pages: 110-130

Authors (3)

Feng, Li (Texas State University) Gai, Yunwei (not in RePEc) Chen, Xiaoning (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.670 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Early research on literacy development usually focuses on children in preschool or kindergarten. Few studies have examined the early literacy of bilingual children. This study examines its relationship with different family learning environments (e.g. book availability), and family learning activities (e.g. reading books, telling stories, and singing songs) of bilingual and monolingual children from 9 months of age to kindergarten entry. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort was used as the analysis sample. We included 1300 bilingual children and 5150 English monolingual children. We uncover that bilingual children generally lag behind in both resources and frequency of family learning activities. Using various decomposition techniques, we show that early reading score differences between bilingual and monolingual children can be explained by differences in resources and early family learning environments.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecoedu:v:39:y:2014:i:c:p:110-130
Journal Field
Education
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25