Development And Its Relationship Of Children's Chinese And English Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is one of the most important research areas in meta-linguistic awareness. Since 1980s, it has been widely investigated just because acquisition and development of phonological awareness has direct impact on the development of Children's reading skill and teaching of reading. Two important research issues include: 1) phonological awareness and its components development; 2) the relationship between phonological awareness and reading development. Most research has focused on the relationship between phonological awareness and reading while few have dealt with the acquisition and development of phonological awareness. The development of Chinese and English phonological awareness for Mandarin-speaking Children is almost unexplored.Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were carried to investigate: 1) development of Chinese and English phonological awareness for Mandarin-speaking children; 2) relationship between Chinese and English phonological awareness.Current study consists of five parts.Part 1 A longitudinal study on the developmental course of Chinese and English phonological awareness in first grade. First grade students were participated in the study and tested three times in the beginning, middle and end of first semester. The results show: 1) There is no significant difference of accuracy in tasks of Chinese rhyming, onset, tone awareness for the test taken in the beginning of the semester. This means three of these are all in the same developmental level; The resultsfrom the test taken in the end of the semester shows that tone awareness was being developed much faster than others and has high developed level than onset-rime awareness. Onset and rime awareness are at same developmental level that is higher than that of phoneme awareness. 2) At the beginning of semester, different components of English phonological awareness have different developmental level, from high to low, of rhyming awareness, onset awareness and phoneme awareness. Same difference and order were also found at the end of semester.Part 2 A cross-sectional study on the development of Chinese and English phonological awareness. Students from first, third and fifth grade were participated this study. The results show: 1) children's Chinese phonological awareness was developed with the grades but development speed varies according to different components of phonological awareness. Tone and rhyming awareness and were developed in first and third grade while onset and phoneme awareness were developed across first, third and fifth grade. 2) children's English phonological awareness was also developed with grades. Accuracy performance increased with grades in all phonological awareness tasks. But the developed level of different components was different. It takes order, from high to low, of rhyming and end phoneme awareness, onset awareness, and phonemic awareness.Part 3 A study on the relationship between Chinese and English phonological awareness. The results show: 1) The developed level of Chinese phonological awareness was high than that of English phonological awareness at all of first, third and fifth grades; 2) There was a significant difference between high and low Chinese phonological awareness group in all English phonological awareness tasks. 3) The correlation between Chinese and English phonological awareness is significant. Chinese rhyming awareness task has highest correlation with all components of English phonological awareness. 4) English phonological awareness can be reliably predicted from Chinese rhymingawareness.Part 4 A study on the effects of English learning on the development of Chinese and English phonological awareness. The students were from two schools and divided into two groups in each school. Only one group students were received English lesson. The results show: 1) Learning English helps the development of both English and Chinese phonological awareness; 2) English learning has positive effects on onset-rime awareness, and phonemic awareness of Chinese phonological awareness while tone awareness is not affected; 3) English learning has effects on development of all tasks in English phonological awareness but observed in third grade students.The present study shows for the first grade students, components of Chinese phonological awareness are all at the same developed level in the beginning of first semester while components of English phonological awareness are emergent in the order as other researchers studied. The order of most developed components is same for both Chinese and English phonological awareness. The study also shows that English phonological awareness can be reliably predicted from Chinese rhyming awareness and English learning has positive effects on the development of Chinese phonological awareness.