Bilingual Home Literacy Experiences and Early Biliteracy Development among Chinese–Canadian First Graders
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the Introduction and Literature Review section, on page 2, third paragraph, the authors touch upon the importance of digital literacy and exposure as part of HLE. It would be helpful if they could elaborate on the differences between guided and non-guided (independent) digital literacy in supporting HLE. Additionally, on the same page, the authors state that language comprehension explains a significant portion of the variance in reading comprehension. However, the term "most" could be replaced with another statistically accepted term.
Moving on to page 3, the authors state, "Due to the lack of reliable and valid assessments in reading comprehension and equivalent letter-word recognition in Chinese, only bilingual receptive vocabulary skills were included in this analysis." It is unclear whether they are referring to their own paper or a reference cited. Clarification would be appreciated.
Regarding the Data Analysis: Results (Descriptive Statistics) section, it would be beneficial for the authors to include the total number of items for each test in both English and Chinese.
The correlational and hierarchical regression analyses in the result section may be confusing to some readers. It would be helpful to rearrange the entire section according to the three research questions addressed in the paper. Adding headings like the research questions would be helpful.
Overall comments: The paper should be checked for APA settings, especially the headings. The tables need proper adjustment for both rows and columns. Furthermore, the result section should be rearranged with headings added according to the research questions addressed. The discussion should follow the same layout. Organizing the sections by research questions will make it easier for readers to understand the rationale behind the study.
Should be checked.
Author Response
Please see the attached response to reviewers.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, this is a well-conducted empirical study that analyses the findings correctly and coherently, as well as presenting them in the context of other studies in the field. Some of the findings can be applied immediately to improve the effectiveness of Home Literacy Experiences.
One shortcoming is the lack of balance between the data collected and used for English on the one hand and for Chinese on the other. This is acknowledged by the author(s), "due to the lack of reliable and valid assessments in reading comprehension and equivalent letter/word recognition in Chinese, only bilingual receptive vocabulary skills were included in this analysis.” (p.3) and "due to the lack of available reliable instruments for reading and word recognition in Chinese for Chinese heritage language speakers in North America, only Chinese receptive vocabulary skill was assessed.” (p.6) However, for a complete and balanced study, it would have been important to gather the same data for English and Chinese. Would it not be possible to adapt the assessment methods for English so that they can be used for Chinese?
Also, in the section "methods - participants" (p.5), the figures and description of participants seem to be contradictory. Did 200 families participate in this study, or 66 first-graders and their families? Did the study consider families with children “enrolled in kindergarten to grade three”, or was it “limited to children who were first graders at the time of data collection”? This needs to be sorted out before publication.
Other comments and suggestions:
Page 1: Introduction: “The number of children who learn to speak, read, and write more than one language has increased dramatically as world immigration rates have increased.” Though this statement may feel intuitively correct, the increase in bi- and multilingualism is by no means dramatic, as a large percentage of the world’s population is bi- or trilingual to begin with, even before migrating. Migration just adds a few percentage points.
Page 3: “bilingual parents demonstrated a higher frequency of shared reading [...], even though they have fewer English books at home...” – Particularly in this sentence, but also throughout the text, “books”, “number of books” etc. does not make it clear that what is referred to is the number of children’s books. In fact, in this particular sentence the default reading would definitely be that the number of books owned by parents is the relevant parameter.
Page 4: “one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in a metropolitan city in the province of British Columbia, Canada” – Why so mysterious? I assume we’re talking about Vancouver, right? This should be stated clearly.
Page 5: “Family SES was categorized by the family's annual household income” – This is a little simplistic; income is only one of the factors determining socio-economic status; education and occupation should also be taken into account. For instance, teachers earn less than plumbers, but still have a higher socio-economic status. Having said that, for the purpose of this study, i.e. to distinguish families with low income, the purely income-based classification may be sufficient.
Page 9: “gender had negative correlations with parental language teaching”, “Gender was positively correlated with English receptive vocabulary” – The use of “gender” here seems rather odd. Which gender was positively or negatively correlated with these variables?
Pages9/10: Table 4 needs to be reformatted so that the double asterisks aren’t split. Also, the note is not clear. What is “up-left” and “down-right”?
Page 15: “who have a desire to maintain children’s bilingual abilities” – It’s more a case of letting children develop their bilingual abilities then maintaining them, as they don’t have these abilities to begin with.
Abstract: “bilingual books”, i.e. books containing English and Chinese in the same book, is not what is meant, I think. How about “books in both languages”?
The term “parent-direct teaching”, used several times in the article (with and without hyphen), is unclear and doesn’t follow normal compounding rules. Better alternatives would be “direct teaching by parents”, or perhaps “parents’ direct teaching”.
Page 4: “bilingual families are superdiverse in their socio-demographic backgrounds including L1, gender, socioeconomic statuses (SES), and immigration statuses”: “superdiverse” is rather colloquial for academic writing, and the switch from singular (L1, gender) to plural (statuses, statuses) in this enumeration should be avoided; stick to the singular.
Page 5: “Twenty-eight boys and 38 girls”: This clause is missing a verb... “took part”? “were analysed”?
Page 6: “letter word recognition” is missing a slash: “letter/word recognition”
Page 7: “so that only those has a complete set of data were analyzed” – Correct the grammar in this clause.
Page 8: “On average, parents rated higher in their English HLE across all four sub-scales” – The comparative form “higher” needs something to compare; this sentence is incomplete. I think what is meant is: “higher in their English HLE than in their Chinese HLE”, right?
Page 14: “the number of Chinese books and parental shared reading was also found to be significantly related to Chinese receptive vocabulary” – “were also found to be”
Author Response
Please see the attached responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I approve of all the changes that the author/s made in V2.0.
