Morphological Awareness,Orthographic Knowledge,and Spelling Errors: Keys to Understanding Early Chinese Literacy Acquisition

This 1-year longitudinal study examined the extent to which morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness, along with speeded naming, uniquely explained word recognition, dictation (i.e., spelling), and reading comprehension among 171 young Hong Kong Chinese children. With age and vocabulary knowledge statistically controlled, both morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge were uniquely associated with all three concurrently measured literacy skills, as well as longitudinal measures of specific literacy skills. Naming speed was also uniquely associated with concurrent word reading, as well as all three literacy skills longitudinally, even with their autoregressive effects controlled. Analyses of children's spelling mistakes indicated that 97% and 95% of all errors were either morpholexically or orthographically based at times 1 and 2, respectively. Morphologically based spelling errors were also uniquely associated with all three literacy skills across time. Findings underscore the importance of morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge for Chinese literacy acquisition.     

Longitudinal predictors of very early Chinese literacy acquisition

This 2‐year longitudinal study examined both concurrent and longitudinal relations of a variety of reading‐related cognitive tasks and Chinese word reading and word dictation among 187 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners aged 4–6. Homophone awareness, visual skills and syllable awareness were all uniquely associated with Chinese word reading across time, with age, vocabulary knowledge and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. Only visual skill and syllable deletion uniquely explained early Chinese word dictation, however. Results extend previous research on cognitive correlates of Chinese literacy and highlight the small but unique contribution of homophone awareness for early reading acquisition in Chinese.     

Character and word reading in Chinese: Why and how they should be considered uniquely vis-à-vis literacy development

Two correlational studies from the same data set demonstrated the distinctiveness of character and word reading for Chinese reading development among 337 Hong Kong Chinese children in grades 1–3. Study 1 examined the cognitive-linguistic correlates of single-character reading and two-character word reading. Rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and visual-orthographic skill independently explained variance in both character and word reading beyond age, grade, nonverbal IQ and vocabulary knowledge. Importantly, rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness additionally explained variance in word reading even after statistically controlling for character reading; there were no such unique correlates for character reading beyond word reading. Study 2 investigated the roles of character and word reading in reading comprehension. Both were individually significantly associated with reading comprehension even when a multifaceted measure of language comprehension was statistically controlled. Moreover, character reading and language comprehension significantly explained variance in reading comprehension through word reading; word reading and language comprehension uniquely contributed to reading comprehension in the model. Results suggest that character and word reading likely reflect slightly different processes in Chinese literacy: Theoretically, these results underscore the importance of models of reading that integrate unique features of Chinese. Practically, these results suggest that character and word reading may depend on different cognitive-linguistic processes which can be cultivated when teaching them, separately or together.     

The importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition

This study examined the importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition. English is an opaque orthographic system, in which letters and sounds have indirect correspondences. Korean Hangul, on the other hand, is a transparent orthographic system where there are direct letter-sound correspondences. Sixty-five children from Grades 2 to 4 were tested on a set of comparable Korean and English tasks tapping into oral vocabulary, phonemic awareness, morphological awareness, real word reading, and passage reading comprehension. Results showed that morphological awareness explained a significant amount of variance in word reading and reading comprehension within both Korean Hangul and English, suggesting that morphological awareness is important not only in an opaque orthography but also in a transparent orthography. Furthermore, morphological awareness in one language uniquely predicted a significant amount of variance in reading real words in the other language, suggesting that morphological awareness facilitates word reading across different orthographies.     

Chinese-English biscriptal reading: cognitive component skills across orthographies

This study examined the associations of Chinese visual-orthographic skills, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness to Chinese and English word reading among 326 Hong Kong Chinese second- and fifth-graders learning English as a second language. Developmentally, tasks of visual-orthographic skill, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness improved with age. However, the extent to which each of the constructs explained variance in Chinese and English word reading was stable across age but differed by orthography. Across grades, visual-orthographic skills and morphological awareness, but not phonological awareness, were uniquely associated with Chinese character recognition with age and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. In contrast, Chinese visual-orthographic skills and phonological awareness, but not morphological awareness, accounted for unique variance in English word reading even with the effects of Chinese character recognition and other reading-related cognitive tasks statistically controlled. Thus, only visual-orthographic skills appeared to be a consistent factor in explaining both Chinese and English word reading, perhaps in part because Hong Kong Chinese children are taught in school to read both Chinese and English using a “look and say” strategy that emphasizes visual analysis for word recognition. These findings extend previous research on Chinese visual-orthographic skills to English word reading and underscore commonality and uniqueness in bilingual reading acquisition.     

The Relation Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: Evidence From Mediation and Longitudinal Models

We examined the role of a hypothesized factor in reading comprehension: morphological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes. In this longitudinal study, we measured English-speaking children’s morphological awareness, word reading skills, and reading comprehension at Grades 3 and 4, in addition to their phonological awareness, vocabulary, and nonverbal ability as control measures. Path analyses revealed that word reading skills partially mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension at each grade. Further, children’s early morphological awareness partially explained children’s gains in reading comprehension, and their early reading comprehension partially explained their gains in morphological awareness. These findings support the predictions of recent models of reading comprehension: that morphological awareness impacts reading comprehension both indirectly through word reading skills and directly through the language system and that morphological awareness underpins the development of reading comprehension (e.g., Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).     

Rapid naming in relation to reading and writing in Korean (Hangul), Chinese (Hanja) and English among Korean children: a 1‐year longitudinal study

The relation of rapid automatised naming (RAN) to word recognition may depend on the phonological regularity of the orthography. This study examined differential contributions of RAN to reading and writing in Korean alphabetic Hangul, logographic Hanja (Chinese) and English as a second language among 73 fifth graders in Korea across 1 year. RAN was differentially associated between reading and writing in Hangul and English. After statistically controlling for age, gender, morphological awareness, vocabulary and phonological awareness, RAN was uniquely predictive of Hangul word writing but not Hangul word recognition, and it uniquely accounted for English word recognition but not English word writing. Meanwhile, RAN explained both reading and writing in Hanja. Findings were discussed in terms of their orthography characteristics and different levels of proficiency.     

Considering linguistic and orthographic features in early literacy acquisition: Evidence from Korean

This study investigated (1) the role of syllable awareness in word reading and spelling after accounting for the effects of print-related skills (letter-name and letter-sound knowledge, and rapid serial naming), and (2) unique contributions of orthographic, semantic (vocabulary and morphological awareness), phonological, and print-related predictors to word reading and spelling for 4- and 5-year old Korean-speaking children (N = 168). Syllable awareness was found to be positively related to word reading and spelling after accounting for print-related skills and phoneme awareness. Letter-name knowledge and orthographic awareness were uniquely related to word reading and spelling after accounting for other language and literacy-related skills. In addition, phoneme awareness was uniquely related to spelling whereas rapid serial naming was uniquely related to word reading, after accounting for other language and literacy-related skills. Semantic knowledge such as vocabulary and morphological awareness were not related to either word reading or spelling after accounting for other language and literacy-related skills. Word reading and spelling remained uniquely and positively related to each other. These findings are discussed in light of crosslinguistic variation in early literacy acquisition.     

Reading and Spelling Chinese Among Beginning Readers: What Skills Make a Difference?

The contributions of six important reading-related skills (phonological awareness, rapid naming, orthographic skills, morphological awareness, listening comprehension, and syntactic skills) to Chinese word and text reading were examined among 290 Chinese first graders in Hong Kong. Rapid naming, but not phonological awareness, was a significant predictor of Chinese word reading and writing to dictation (i.e., spelling) in the context of orthographic skills and morphological awareness. Commonality analyses suggested that orthographic skills and morphological awareness each contributed significant amount of unique variance to Chinese word reading and spelling. Syntactic skills accounted for significant amount of unique variance in reading comprehension at both sentence and passage levels after controlling for the effects of word reading and the other skills, but listening comprehension did not. A model on the interrelationships among the reading-related skills and Chinese reading at both word and text levels was proposed.     

The ABC’s of Chinese: maternal mediation of Pinyin for Chinese children’s early literacy skills

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children??s word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as an aid to reading Chinese characters) with help from their mothers. The videotapes were later coded on a scale (adapted from Aram & Levin, 2001) of mothers?? writing facilitation techniques. Scores on this scale of maternal mediation of Pinyin uniquely explained children??s reading of Chinese words, but not writing of Chinese words, after statistically controlling for maternal education and age, and children??s non-verbal IQ, age, and phonological awareness. At time 2, 22 of the children from time 1 were further tested on Chinese word reading and word reading task 1?year later. After controlling for children??s age and non-verbal IQ, maternal Pinyin mediation uniquely explained 6% of the variance in children??s word writing and 7% of the variance in children??s word reading performance at time 2. Results underscore the potential importance of the maternal scaffolding role for reading acquisition both theoretically and practically in a domain not previously explored (i.e., use of a common coding system (Pinyin) for learning to read, rather than word reading itself).     

The contribution of phonological and morphological awareness in Chinese–English bilingual reading acquisition

The current study examined the contribution of cross-language phonological and morphological awareness to reading acquisition in bilingual children. Participants were 140 children (M _age = 8.26 years) between Grades 1–4 who learned Chinese as their first language and English as their second language. Awareness of phoneme, onset-rime, compound structures and polysemy (i.e. words with multiple meanings) were measured using conceptually comparable tasks in both languages. Oral vocabulary, single word reading, and reading comprehension were also assessed. Path analysis revealed significant direct effects from Chinese rime awareness to both English word reading and reading comprehension. English phoneme awareness also had a significant direct effect on Chinese word reading. There was a significant direct effect from Chinese polyseme identification to English reading comprehension. Awareness of compound structure in one language also had indirect effects on reading outcomes in the other language via within-language compound structure awareness. These finding provided evidence for bi-directional cross-language phonological and morphological transfer in Chinese–English bilingual reading acquisition.     

The role of morphological awareness in reading achievement among young Chinese-speaking English language learners: a longitudinal study

The present study examined the development of morphological awareness and its contribution to vocabulary and reading comprehension among young Chinese-speaking English language learners (ELLs). We focused on two aspects of morphological awareness: derivational awareness and compound awareness. Participants included 46 kindergarteners (younger cohort) and 34 first graders (older cohort) of Chinese descent in Canada at the beginning of the study. Children were administered a battery of English measures including derivational awareness, compound awareness, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, and reading comprehension at two time points spaced 1?year apart. Results demonstrated a steady growth in Chinese-speaking ELL children??s derivational and compound awareness from kindergarten to Grade 2. Importantly, for the first graders, morphological awareness accounted for unique variance in vocabulary concurrently, and unique variance in both vocabulary and reading comprehension a year later. Generally speaking, the variance explained by morphological awareness increased with grade level, and derivational awareness accounted for more variance in vocabulary and reading comprehension than did compound awareness. These results underscore the emerging importance of morphological awareness, especially derivational awareness, in young Chinese-speaking ELL children??s English reading development.     

General auditory processing,speech perception and phonological awareness skills in Chinese–English biliteracy

This study focused on the associations of general auditory processing, speech perception, phonological awareness and word reading in Cantonese‐speaking children from Hong Kong learning to read both Chinese (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]). Children in Grades 2–4 (N=133) participated and were administered measures of IQ, word reading, phonological awareness, speech perception and auditory processing in both L1 and L2. Auditory processing uniquely explained both L1 and L2 word reading. While L1 speech perception accounted for unique variance in L1 word reading, L2 phonological awareness explained unique variance in L2 word reading. In cross‐language comparisons, L1 phonological awareness and speech perception were uniquely associated with L2 word reading, suggesting cross‐language transfer from L1 to L2 only. Results underscore the importance of auditory processing for reading across variable learning contexts.     

Synergetic effects of phonological awareness,vocabulary, and word reading on bilingual children’s reading comprehension: A three-year study

Using comparable measures of first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English, this three-year longitudinal study examined the synergetic effects of phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading on reading comprehension development among 227 Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals from Grades 2-4. Structural equation growth modeling revealed that all three factors were significantly linked to one another and to initial reading comprehension for each language. Across languages, L1 Chinese vocabulary was directly linked to initial L2 English reading comprehension, while L1 Chinese phonological awareness was indirectly linked to initial L2 English reading comprehension via L2 English vocabulary and word reading. These findings underscore the synergetic effects of early phonological and lexical skills in determining early reading comprehension ability in both L1 and L2.     

Impact of early code‐skill and oral‐comprehension training on reading achievement in first grade

In a 3‐year longitudinal study, we examined the relationships between oral language development, early training and reading acquisition on word‐identification and reading‐comprehension tests administered to a sample of 687 French children. Hierarchical linear models showed that both phonological awareness and oral comprehension at the age of 4 years were relevant to reading acquisition 2 years later. These two broad skills explained separate parts of the variance on both outcome measures, while revealing opposite effects: phonological skills explained more variance for alphabetic reading skills and oral comprehension explained more variance for reading comprehension. We also assessed the effects of two preschool training programmes focusing on either phonological awareness or comprehension skills. The results showed that phonological awareness training had a positive effect on alphabetic scores, and comprehension training had a positive effect on reading comprehension. These results provide insight into early oral instruction and contribute to the theoretical debate about the linguistic predictors of literacy acquisition.     

Examining an extended simple view of reading in Chinese: The role of naming efficiency for reading comprehension

The simple view of reading (SVR) proposes that reading comprehension is the product of two constructs, namely decoding and linguistic comprehension. The present study examined the adequacy of an extended SVR in Chinese. Participants were 190 pairs of Chinese twin children of Grades 1–3 recruited in Hong Kong. The children were given Chinese measures of decoding (character reading, word reading, and 1-min word reading), linguistic comprehension (morphological awareness, vocabulary, morphosyntactic skills, and discourse skills), rapid naming (Chinese digits, English digits, and English letters), and passage reading comprehension (with multiple-choice and open-ended questions). Results of structural equation modeling showed that the direct paths from decoding and linguistic comprehension to reading comprehension were significant, but that from rapid naming was not. For the role of rapid naming in reading comprehension, the best fitting model showed that the contribution of rapid naming to reading comprehension was fully mediated by decoding. The model explained a total of 83% of the variance in reading comprehension. Therefore, the present findings support the SVR in a Chinese writing system; rapid naming may reflect some basic visual-verbal learning ability which is important for acquiring word recognition skills.     

Metalinguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese (L1) and English (L2)

How are metalinguistic skills associated with vocabulary knowledge in languages with contrasting phonological and morphological properties? To address this question, tasks of phonological awareness and morphological awareness, other reasoning and literacy-related skills, and measures of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese and English, were administered to 217 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children learning English as a second language. Syllable-level awareness but not phoneme onset awareness was strongly associated with Chinese vocabulary knowledge; phoneme onset awareness but not syllable awareness was associated with English vocabulary knowledge. In hierarchical regression equations, phonological awareness in English explained unique variance in English vocabulary knowledge but not in Chinese vocabulary knowledge. In contrast, measures of morphological awareness, which were strongly associated with syllable awareness, uniquely explained 13% of the variance in Chinese vocabulary knowledge apart from all other measures included but were not uniquely associated with English vocabulary knowledge. Findings highlight the strong overlap across phonological and morphological awareness in Chinese and the different associations of each to vocabulary acquisition in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) languages.     

Contributions of morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to Chinese children’s reading comprehension versus reading fluency: evidence from a longitudinal mediation model

Some cognitive processes may be shared between reading comprehension and reading fluency, while others may be independent. In this longitudinal study, 127 Chinese children in grades 1–2 were tested three times (T1–T3) to explore the contributions of early morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to subsequent reading comprehension and reading fluency. The results demonstrated that both T1 morphological awareness and RAN directly and significantly explained a similar amount of variance in T3 reading comprehension and reading fluency. T1 Morphological awareness predicted T3 reading comprehension via T2 word-reading accuracy but not word-reading fluency, whereas the indirect influence of T1 RAN on T3 reading comprehension was not significant. In contrast, morphological awareness predicted reading fluency via word-reading accuracy and fluency, while RAN predicted it only via word-reading fluency not accuracy. The findings add to the growing literature by providing evidence of the similarities and differences in the cognitive underpinnings of reading comprehension versus reading fluency in Chinese children.

     

Vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) reading comprehension ability

This study explored the role of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in reading comprehension ability of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) learners. One hundred ninety five CHL students participated in this study and completed a series of measures including two sets of vocabulary knowledge (one consisting of items pertaining to early exposure to spoken Chinese and the other comprised of items selected from a pool of words in Chinese as a foreign language classrooms), morphological awareness (structural awareness and functional awareness), and reading comprehension ability (lexical inference and passage comprehension). Drawing upon structural equation modeling with a bootstrap estimation method, the study found that vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness both contributed to reading comprehension among CHL learners. More critically, the results indicated that morphological awareness mediated the relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in CHL learners. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses probed the relative contributions of vocabulary knowledge measures to morphological awareness and reading comprehension, and found that vocabulary knowledge acquired in formal Chinese instruction contributed to morphological awareness and reading comprehension, to a greater extent, than that gained through early exposure to spoken Chinese.     

An emergent interaction between reading fluency and vocabulary in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion elementary students

This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading fluency and reading comprehension in English and French at both time points. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine whether vocabulary and word reading fluency interact in predicting English and French reading comprehension. Regressions were constructed for each language and grade separately. Results showed that in Grade 2, word reading fluency and vocabulary contributed independently to reading comprehension, though an interaction between these variables was not observed in either language. By Grade 3, an interaction between these constructs emerged and was shown to predict reading comprehension in both English and French. Specifically, vocabulary was positively related to reading comprehension among students with moderate to high levels of fluency, while vocabulary did not uniquely contribute to reading comprehension among those who were less fluent. The emergence of an interaction in Grade 3 suggests that as students’ reading skills become more proficient, reading comprehension outcomes are better explained by taking into account the interaction between reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge.