Raising young children in multilingual Montreal: Chinese-Canadian parents' language choices and storybook reading style

Wei Mao, Diane Pesco — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Despite growing research on parent-child storybook reading in bilingual contexts, little is known about the reading styles that bi- or multilingual parents, particularly immigrant parents, employ with their children, and how these practices vary depending on the language of the book. This laboratory-based observational study examined how Chinese-Canadian parents living in a multilingual environment interact with their young child to support language learning during storybook reading. Thirty parent-preschooler dyads living in Montreal, Quebec where French is the dominant language and English is also widely spoken, participated. Parents were observed sharing a storybook with their child with a Chinese book and a French or an English book, depending on parental choice. The results showed that when reading either a French or an English book, parents used significantly more dialogic talk than when reading the Chinese book. Specifically, parents asked more literal questions to assess whether their child understood the vocabulary and text or to teach vocabulary. In both conditions, parents asked few inferential and distancing questions that place higher cognitive demands on children but are important to story comprehension and foster their engagement with reading. Results also revealed that parents and children preferred to interact in Chinese even when reading a French or an English book. The findings could guide interventions with immigrant families to optimize parental support of language learning in bilingual and multilingual contexts and promote positive experiences for both parents and their child.

Research on Preschool and Primary Education

Raising young children in multilingual Montreal: Chinese-Canadian parents' language choices and storybook reading style