Untangling Chinese preschoolers’ early writing development: associations among early reading,executive functioning,and early writing skills

Reading and Writing - Despite a growing body of literature in English-speaking contexts documenting associations among children’s early reading, executive function (EF), and early writing...     

Children’s oral narrative and reading skills in the first 3?years of reading instruction

This research investigated the link between oral narrative and reading skills in the first 3 years of reading instruction. Study 1 consisted of 61 children (M = 6:1 years) who had experienced 1 year of reading instruction on average. Children’s story retelling was scored for memory and narrative quality. The quality of children’s narratives correlated positively with their reading skill at this age, but narrative quality did not uniquely predict their reading skill 1 year later. Study 2 consisted of 39 children (M = 7:0 years) who had experienced 2 years of reading instruction on average. At this age, the quality of children’s narratives uniquely predicted their reading skill concurrently and 1 year later, even after controlling for their receptive vocabulary and early decoding. These findings have implications for theories of the oral language foundations of reading and for assessment in the early years of reading instruction.     

Exploring the reading–writing relationship in young Chinese language learners’ sentence writing

This study explored the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between reading and writing in young Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners’ sentence writing, using structural equation modeling. The participants comprised 126 Hong Kong senior primary ethnic minority students, whose literacy skills were assessed at two time points over the course of a year. In grade 5 (Time-1), they were assessed with Chinese character reading and reading comprehension measures to evaluate their reading ability. In grade 6 (Time-2), their sentence reading, sentence writing, and literacy component skills of Chinese character writing fluency and written syntactic skills were assessed. The results demonstrated that students’ reading and writing performances were substantially related both concurrently and longitudinally. Furthermore, (1) at Time-2, the component skills accounted for substantial portions of variance in sentence reading and writing skills, along with the relationship between them, while (2) Time-1 reading ability predicted Time-2 component skills and, through the mediation thereof, indirectly predicted sentence writing. Thus, in light of the linguistic characteristics of the Chinese language, literacy component skills are crucial component processes that connect reading and writing in CSL learners’ sentence writing.     

To what extent does a regional dialect and accent impact on the development of reading and writing skills?

The issue of whether a regional accent and/or dialect impact(s) on the development of literacy skills remains current in the UK. For decades the issue has dogged debate concerning education outcomes, portable skills and employability. This article summarises research on the topic using systematic review methodology. A scoping review was undertaken with the research question: ‘To what extent does a regional dialect and accent impact on the development of reading and writing skills?’ The review covers research relevant to the teaching of five to 16-year-olds in England, but also draws on research within Europe, the USA, Australia and the Caribbean. The results suggest that curricula have marginalised language variation; that the impact of regional accent and dialect on writing is relatively minor; that young people are adept at style-shifting between standard and non-standard forms; and that inappropriate pedagogical responses to regional variation can have detrimental effects on children’s educational achievement.     

Models of English and Chinese word reading for adolescent Chinese–English bilinguals

These two studies examined the processes underlying English and Chinese word reading in Chinese–English bilinguals in relation to their experiences with their second language (L2), as determined by length of time in an English-speaking environment. Phonological awareness, morphological awareness and vocabulary measures were administered in English and Chinese to adolescents and young adults living in Canada. The results show that similar word reading processes were used to read English and Chinese for the bilinguals who were recent immigrants and had less exposure to English. Specifically, vocabulary knowledge was directly related to English and Chinese word reading in the more recent immigrants. However, phonological awareness was not related to English word reading in this group. Conversely, reading processes in the two languages were less similar for participants who were long-term immigrants. In the long-term immigrant group, English reading was related to phonological awareness. The writing system of the first language (L1) exerted an influence on L2 reading and the degree of influence was related to language experience.     

The role of inhibitory functioning in children’s reading skills

Executive functions, including inhibition, have been implicated in children’s reading ability. This study investigates whether children’s performance on an inhibition task is more indicative of reading ability than a measure of another executive function, that is, planning. Fifty‐three male participants were administered a reading test and tests of inhibition and planning not requiring a verbal response. Regression analyses revealed that only inhibition significantly predicted reading. Previous inconsistencies may reflect the modality of the tasks used to measure inhibition. Therefore non‐verbal measures may have highest utility for educational psychologists.     

Chinese Australians’ Chineseness and their mathematics achievement: the role of habitus

Large-scale international comparative studies and cross-ethnic studies have revealed that Chinese students, living either in China or overseas, consistently outperform their counterparts in mathematics. Empirical research has discussed psychological, educational, and cultural reasons behind Chinese students’ better mathematics performance. However, there is scant sociological investigation of this phenomenon. The current mixed methods study aims to make a contribution in this regard. The study conceptualises Chineseness through Bourdieu’s sociological notion of habitus and considers this habitus of Chineseness generating, but not determining, mechanism that underpins commitment to mathematics learning. The study firstly analyses the responses of 230 Chinese Australian participants to a set of questionnaire items. Results indicate that the habitus of Chineseness significantly mediates the relationship between participants’ commitment to mathematics learning and their mathematics achievement. The study then reports on the interviews with five participants to add nuances and dynamics to the mediating role of habitus of Chineseness. The study complements the existing literature by providing sociological insight into the better mathematics achievement of Chinese students.     

High school boys’ and girls’ writing conceptions and writing self-efficacy beliefs: what is their role in writing performance?

This study investigated the conceptions about writing and writing self-efficacy beliefs held by high school students in relation to the students’ gender as well as their associations with writing achievement. The results show that female students have more sophisticated writing conceptions than their male counterparts but no gender differences were found in writing self-efficacy beliefs. In addition, results reveal that writing self-efficacy beliefs and gender play an important role in predicting writing performance and that writing performance is moderated by students’ writing conceptions. Educational implications and further research are discussed.     

“iRobiQ”: the influence of bidirectional interaction on kindergarteners’ reading motivation,literacy, and behavior

This study focused on an intelligent robot which was viewed as a language teaching/learning tool to improve children’s reading ability, reading interest, and learning behavior. The iRobiQ, with its multimedia contents, was employed to encourage children to read, speak, and answer questions. Fifty-seven pre-kindergarteners participated in this study, and they were divided into an experimental group (30 children using iRobiQ) and a control group (27 children using a tablet-PC). After 2 months of experiments, the reading ability of the experimental group was better than that of the control group. It was found that using iRobiQ as a learning tool had many advantages, for example, the enhancement of learners’ reading literacy, in comparison with the use of tablet-PC. In this study, there were three interesting findings: (1) iRobiQ is a more effective learning companion as compared to tablet-PC; (2) iRobiQ is a bidirectional interactive toy; and (3) iRobiQ can foster and promote the peer collaboration and competition because it has intriguing characteristics, particularly its communicative and interactive functions. The bidirectional interactive robots allow pre-kindergarten teachers to create more active and interactive learning environment for children and provide the children with more various learning contents.     

The role of compound awareness in Chinese children’s vocabulary acquisition and character reading

This study examined compound awareness in relation to Chinese children's vocabulary acquisition and character reading. Two aspects of compound awareness were investigated: the ability to identify the head of a compound noun and the ability to construct a new compound word from familiar morphemes. The compound awareness tasks, along with rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness tasks, were administered to 29 first graders and 30 second graders in Mainland China. Results show that (1) compound awareness develops relatively early among Chinese children and improves with age, (2) compound awareness explains unique variance in vocabulary and character reading, after controlling for age, RAN, and phonological awareness, and (3) the contribution made by compound awareness to vocabulary is much larger than the contribution made by phonological awareness. These results demonstrate that compound awareness plays a central role in Chinese children's literacy development, particularly in vocabulary acquisition.

Maternal literate mediation of writing and Korean children’s reading and writing across 1 year

The present study examined the relations of maternal literate support instructions during parent–child joint writing to children’s word reading and writing across 1 year among 95 4- and 5-year-old children from Korea. The whole episode of mothers individually teaching their children how to write words was videotaped, and a Korean scale of mothers’ literate mediation of their children’s writing was developed based on six cognitive strategies focusing on whole Gulja (Korean written syllable), visual strokes, letter, Gulja structure, and CV (consonant + vowel) and coda (final consonant of a syllable) subsyllabic units. Maternal literate support explained a significant amount of variance in children’s word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally across 1 year after controlling for children’s age, nonverbal IQ, phonological and morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming and mother’s education. In addition, children’s coda phoneme awareness explained unique variance in word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally. Results underscore the unique characteristics of Korean and the importance of Korean maternal literate support as a major factor in early literacy development.     

A remaking pedagogy: adaptation and archetypes in the child’s multimodal reading and writing

This paper proposes combining theories about, and practices of, using archetypes and adaptation in education for the purposes of multimodal literacy learning. Within such contexts, children of primary school age act as readers, performers and researchers, exploring and analysing existing adaptations of archetypal stories and images across time, space and platforms, as well as writers constructing and producing their own adaptations of archetypes in varying forms. Our suggestions are that ‘revisiting’ and ‘remaking’ existing texts and practices in the multimodal primary classroom can be a route to a deeper and more sophisticated learning experience, and one which challenges current definitions of reading, writing and literacy.     

Differences between the relationship of L1 learners’ performance in integrated writing with both independent listening and independent reading cognitive skills

In recent decades, integrated language competence has been highlighted in the language curricula taught in schools and institutions, and the relationship between test-takers’ performance on integrated tasks and comprehension sources has been much studied. The current study employed the frameworks of reading and listening comprehension processes to examine the difference between the effects of reading competence and listening competence on integrated writing performance. A total of 152 Secondary 5 students from five local schools in Hong Kong responded to three tasks, including an independent listening task, an independent reading task and an integrated writing task. The reading cognitive skills contributed more towards the performance of the integrated writing task than the listening cognitive skills did. Furthermore, the interaction between the relationships of reading and listening to the integrated writing performance was significant. Three subskills each for both listening and reading that belong to higher-order thinking skills—Elaborating, Evaluating and Creating—had significant correlation with integrated writing performance. Implications for the teaching of integrated writing were also discussed.     

Rhetorical meta-language to promote the development of students’ writing skills and subject matter understanding

Background: Feedback is one of the most significant factors for students’ development of writing skills. For feedback to be successful, however, students and teachers need a common language – a meta-language – for discussing texts. Not least because in science education such a meta-language might contribute to improve writing training and feedback-giving.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore students’ perception of teachers’ feedback given on their texts in two genres, and to suggest how writing training and feedback-giving could become more efficient.

Sample: In this study were included 44 degree project students in biology and molecular biology, and 21 supervising teachers at a Swedish university.

Design and methods: The study concerned students’ writing about their degree projects in two genres: scientific writing and popular science writing. The data consisted of documented teacher feedback on the students’ popular science texts. It also included students’ and teachers’ answers to questionnaires about writing and feedback. All data were collected during the spring of 2012. Teachers’ feedback, actual and recalled – by students and teachers, respectively – was analysed and compared using the so-called Canons of rhetoric.

Results: While the teachers recalled the given feedback as mainly positive, most students recalled only negative feedback. According to the teachers, suggested improvements concerned firstly the content, and secondly the structure of the text. In contrast, the students mentioned language style first, followed by content.

Conclusions: The disagreement between students and teachers regarding how and what feedback was given on the students texts confirm the need of improved strategies for writing training and feedback-giving in science education. We suggest that the rhetorical meta-language might play a crucial role in overcoming the difficulties observed in this study. We also discuss how training of writing skills may contribute to students’ understanding of their subject matter.     

The direct and indirect effects of word reading and vocabulary on adolescents’ reading comprehension: Comparing struggling and adequate comprehenders

The current study examined statistically significant differences between struggling and adequate readers using a multicomponent model of reading comprehension in 796 sixth through eighth graders, with a primary focus on word reading and vocabulary. Path analyses and Wald tests were used to investigate the direct and indirect relations of word identification, vocabulary, silent reading efficiency, and inference-making on reading comprehension. Comparing struggling versus adequate comprehenders revealed statistically significant differences in path coefficients. In both groups, vocabulary had the largest total effect when considering its direct and indirect effects. Word identification was the strongest direct predictor for struggling comprehenders (β = .18 for struggling vs. β = ? .03 for adequate), while vocabulary was the strongest predictor for adequate comprehenders (β = .40 for adequate vs. β = .14 for struggling). Findings reinforce (a) vocabulary knowledge plays a primary role in explaining individual differences in adolescent reading comprehension, (b) the need to differentiate intervention to address underlying difficulties of struggling readers, and (c) the relations of reading component skills (e.g., word reading and silent reading efficiency) to reading comprehension may be different based on reader proficiency.