The role of parental reading practices in grade four Lebanese students' reading comprehension in EFL.

Abstract

Various research was conducted on parental involvement and children's academic achievement at school. Studies have found that parental involvement plays an important role in young children’s academic success (Durand, 2011). Parental involvement is what parents do to improve their children’s educational activities at home and empower the communication with teachers about their children’s school success (Hashmi and Akhter, 2013). In this study, however, parental involvement was limited to the reading practices that 44 Lebanese parents and their grade 4 children engage with at home, with the intention of improving their children’s reading. The purpose of the study is to describe and explore the role of parental involvement on children’s reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) for 44 grade 4 Lebanese students. The rationale for this study is the replication of past research in the context of a Middle Eastern culture (Lebanon) in which Arabic is the native language. In order to answer the 2 research questions: a) What are the parental involvement reading practices for grade 4 study participants? and b) What is the role of parental reading practices in a selected sample for grade 4 Lebanese students’ EFL reading comprehension achievement? a quantitative study was conducted. First, 40 parents of the Lebanese grade 4 students, at a private school in Al Shouf area in Mount Lebanon, answered a questionnaire which was informed by Learning to Read Survey from the 2016 wave of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Second, grade 4 students' assessment in reading comprehension in EFL was informed by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the students answered the same type of reading comprehension questions that were used in the parents' questionnaire. Third, grade 4 English teacher at the randomly selected private school was interviewed about her teaching strategies in reading comprehension that are practiced in her