Early language input and later reading development in Chinese as heritage language (CHL) learners

There is a general tendency to treat heritage language (HL) learners as if they formed a single unitary group with shared linguistic and print experiences. In actuality, however, HL learners vary widely in their early oral and print experiences at home or in other social contexts and as a result, they develop vastly different skills in both oral language and literacy skills. The study aimed to investigate the effect of early oral and print input on later reading development among Chinese as heritage language (CHL) learners. Seventy-three college-level CHL learners who participated in this study completed an early language background questionnaire and a series of reading measures inclusive of print vocabulary knowledge, lexical inferencing ability and reading comprehension. The results found that early language input was significantly related to later reading development. Critically, the study identified the significant factors of language experiences predicting later reading skills. Oral language input at home and print input in CHL schools were found to jointly contribute to the later development of word-level abilities while print input at home predicted later reading comprehension skill among CHL learners. The findings suggest that early oral and print language input at home and in CHL schools could have longitudinal effects on later reading skills.