2021-3

【摘要】

This is a commemorative publication, because it was produced, modified and perfected during the special period of COVID-19. All the authors have gone through the special writing process to gather under the banner of children’s reading and literacy in the Chinese context.

Early reading and literacy are critical for helping children to become good readers. Revolving around the topic, this issue contains five papers on the development and education of early reading and literacy in Chinese young children. The first paper focuses on young children’s development of character reading and knowledge. It indicated that young children are able to recognize and read a number of characters before formally learning to read. They first recognize the shape of the Chinese characters, and then gradually learn to analyze the internal structure.

Picture book reading is always an effective way to promote the development of children’s reading and writing. The second paper examines the effectiveness of a dialogic reading intervention on the interactive quality of mother–child book reading. The findings prove that dialogic mother–child sharing reading is conducive to the improvement of Chinese children’s reading ability. The third paper investigates the association of teachers’ shared book reading strategies and vocabulary development in children from the mountain village kindergartens in remote and poor areas of China. It shows that teachers’ use of textual strategies is a strong predictor of children’s language skills. The fourth paper explores the links between early reading literacy (ERL) and narrative skills in young children. It shows that children initially focused on pictures and then gradually transferred to print during reading, and children’s reading engagement, behavior and comprehension affect their narrative construction and linguistic development.

The above papers reveal the specific characteristics of children’s early literacy and reading in Chinese cultural contexts and the factors to facilitate the development. The assessment and evaluation of child language development is helpful for us to have a deep understanding of children’s early literacy and reading. Therefore, the last paper reports on the ECNUVT project, which aims to the development of a vocabulary test in the Chinese context. The test examines Chinese children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary development. It is expected that the research will bring operational tools to the evaluation of Chinese children’s language development.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the editorial committee for providing a special issue to publish these research works. Early reading and literacy have attracted increasing attention in China in the recent years. However, more research is required to explore the ways in which we promote children’s early reading and literacy. I hope this issue will be provocative to stimulate our thinking on this topic.