本文介紹了在美國較為重要的兩種中文教學模式。一種是曆史悠久的、主要麵向華人社區的中文學校，另一種是目前在美國主流學校發展較快的浸入式中文項目。通過對比年齡相仿的兩組被試中文語言和閱讀的各項技能，以及這些技能對中文句子閱讀理解的貢獻，本文發現了不同教學模式下學生語言和閱讀水平之間的差異所在，以及預測句子閱讀理解的因素。
本文存在如下局限：首先，本研究的樣本，特別是中文學校的樣本較小，這是人力物力有限所致。其次，本文雖然意圖考察兩種不同教學模式下的閱讀習得，但卻沒有對兩種不同的教學模式，如教師的教學法，進行係統的描述和比較。這些問題都有待將來做進一步的研究。
摘要 Abstract
This article first introduces the history and current situations of two important models of teaching Chinese as a nonnative language in North American, i.e., Chinese weekend schools which are rooted in Chinese immigrant communities and Chinese immersion programs which are growing rapidly in mainstream schools.Subsequently, this article reports an empirical study, which investigated and compared the acquisition of oral vocabulary, phonological awareness and reading skills between subjects in these two types of programs.Results show that subjects from the Chinese school have slightly stronger expressive oral vocabulary, Chinese listening comprehension, and Chinese tone awareness; the only statistically significant difference lay in tone awareness.However, such advantage did not facilitate their reading acquisition – subjects from the Chinese immersion program demonstrated statistically significantly stronger text reading and sentence reading comprehension skills.At the same time, their phonological awareness, character/word reading and comprehension subskills contributed significantly to explaining the variations in Chinese sentence reading comprehension.However, no meaningful pattern was detected among subjects from the Chinese school.The study discusses the implications of the results in the context of previous studies on nonnative school age Chinese learners.