DEVELOPING YOUNG CHILDREN'S LITERACY: FAMILY LITERACY PRACTICES

This paper will present two researches on family literacy and how they develop the children's early literacy behaviors. The first research looked into the literacy behaviors of preschool-age children with ages ranging from three to five years and what home environment factors influenced the acquisition of these literacy behaviors. The second research looked into the training of urban poor families into literacy and numeracy through training modules, and looked into how these parents can develop and enhance their own literacy and numeracy and then teach these to their children.

Promising Effects of an Intervention: Young Children’s Literacy Gains and Changes in Their Home Literacy Activities from a Bilingual Family Literacy Program in Canada

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families’ literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours per week, literacy program in three Chinese communities in Toronto. Parents, with their children, participated in the program. The extremely high attendance rate provided evidence that families enjoyed the family literacy intervention and felt that the sessions were worthwhile. For their families’ literacy activities, the three sites followed the same trend: reaching the peak of activity at week four, slightly dropping down at weeks five and six, and then increasing to a second peak at week seven or week eight. Results also showed that across the three groups, children of mothers with lower education levels made fewer gains in their English expressive vocabularies and their Chinese expressive vocabularies, than children whose mothers had a higher level of education.

Family Literacy Programs: Where Have They Come from and Where Are They Going?

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support.Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs.In this paper,the influence of learning theories,the research on children’s early literacy development,and the sociopolitical context with gave rise to the intervention movement,will be reviewed with respect to their impact on current models of family literacy programs.The research on program evaluation is also considered,and is related to current practice and future directions in family literacy programming.

Health Literacy Level of Chinese Residents Improved to 9.48%

The 2013 Monitoring Report of Health Literacy Level of Chinese Residents announced by National Health and Family Planning Commission（NHFPC）on February 17,2015 shows that health literacy level of Chinese residents had increased to 9.48%,a rise of 0.68percentage point over 8.80% in 2012 and an increase of 3 percentage points over 6.48% in 2008.

Healthcare Literacy Level of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Chinese Citizens was 8.55%

State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine（SATCM）,jointly with National Health and Family Planning Commission（NHFPC）,issued results of survey on healthcare literacy of traditional Chinese medicine（TCM）on March 31.