Evaluating the efficacy of a Chinese reading comprehension strategy instruction program for typically developing kindergarten 3 students

Abstract

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a Chinese reading comprehension strategy instruction (RCSI) program on reading and listening comprehension of Cantonese-speaking, typically-developing Kindergarten 3 (K3) students in Hong Kong. Forty-five K3 children from two mainstream kindergartens were randomly allocated to the experimental and control groups. Children in the experimental group received eight sessions of the RCSI program, while those in the control group read assigned story books with their parents. Children’s listening comprehension and reading comprehension skills before and after the training were evaluated using Textual Comprehension Test from the Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale and a Chinese reading comprehension test respectively. Results of two-way mixed Analyses of Variance revealed that the experimental group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in listening comprehension than the control group; however, there were no significant group differences on reading comprehension skills. The findings supported that the RCSI program was efficacious in improving listening comprehension, but not in improving Chinese reading comprehension of narrative texts. The findings were discussed in relation to contributing factors and research limitations. Practical directions for future studies were suggested.