Exploring Chinese middle-class parents’ challenges and coping strategies of dialogic reading in a digital EFL context

Editorial reading guide · Collaboration

How might a parent keep a digital story interactive when reading in another language?

The study investigates the practical and linguistic challenges families faced in digital dialogic reading, using more than one source of evidence.

Who was studied?

Eighteen Chinese parent–child dyads contributed recordings, journals and interviews across eight weeks.

Age / stage: Families learning English as a foreign language

Read with three questions

1. Where did recordings and parents' reflective accounts offer different perspectives?
2. How did the researchers move from individual accounts to their interpretation?
3. How did the authors distinguish the adult’s participation from the child’s engagement?

Keep the limits in view

The accounts document experiences in the circumstances studied. They cannot establish how common an experience is in the wider population or measure an intervention effect.