Oral narrative is an important aspect of children's language development, as well as the foundation of their literacy development. It plays crucial role in children's academic learning. Many studies have shown that children's oral narrative ability is closely related to their reading comprehension ability, and oral narrative ability in the early stage can predict later reading comprehension performance. Other studies have found that children's oral narrative ability is positively correlated with their reading comprehension ability and academic level. However, previous studies rarely distinguish children at different academic levels to investigate the impact of home reading environment on children's oral narrative and reading comprehension.Home literacy environment is the first environment that children are exposed to, which has great impacts on their reading development. A large number of studies have found that home literacy environment has a direct impact on children's reading comprehension. Good reading environment at home is conducive to improve children's literacy and reading comprehension. However, few studies examine its relationship with oral narratives and reading comprehension in children at different academic levels. The current research aims to investigate the relationship between oral narrative and reading comprehension in children at different academic levels, as well as the relationship between home reading environment and their oral narrative and reading comprehension. 140 school-age children with normal intelligence and at different academic levels in Beijing participated in the study.The classic material to measure oral narrative (Frog, where are you?) was used to measure children’s narrative performance. The Demonstrative Scale of Chinese Reading Ability of Primary Senior Students was used to measure children’s reading comprehension ability. The main results are as follows:(1) The total scores and the scores of each dimension of oral narratives and reading comprehension tasks showed significant differences in children at different academic levels. The performance of children at low learning level were significantly worse than that in the other two groups.(2) The total scores of oral narratives were significantly positive correlated to reading comprehension scores of children at different academic levels. Comparing with children at excellent learning performance level, the correlation between oral narrative and reading comprehension was significantly lower in children with learning disabilities. The narrations of story plots and emergencies were positively correlated with reading comprehension in children with excellent learning performance. The narrations of story plots and problem-solving were significantly associated with reading comprehension in children with learning disabilities. Besides, the narrations of story plots uniquely predict the reading comprehension performance of children with learning disabilities and with excellent learning performance.(3) Compared with children at medium or excellent academic levels, children with learning disabilities have poor home reading environment in terms of parents' educational level, parents' attitude to reading, the number of books at home, children's independent literacy activities and parent-child cultural activities at home. (4) Children's oral narrative performance positively correlated to their independent literacy activities at home, the number of books, parents' attitude to reading and parent-child cultural activities at home. Children’s reading comprehension performance positively correlated to their independent literacy activities at home, the number of books at home, parents' attitude to reading and their educational level.The above results indicate that children at different academic level demonstrated significant differences in oral narrative and reading comprehension performance. Children's oral narrative and reading comprehension abilities are positively correlated with their home reading environment. These results provide important evidence to the relationship of narrative and reading comprehension in children with different learning performances. Also, the results of the current study provide suggestions to Chinese language and literacy teaching in primary school children.
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