| Metalinguistic awareness plays an important role in English word spelling and word reading.The current study investigated the effects of three dimensions of metalinguistic awareness----phonological awareness,orthographic awareness,and morphological awareness on Chinese university students’ English word spelling and word reading.The concern of the study was their predictive power on word spelling and word reading respectively.This study was based on a sample of 50 university students,divided into two groups according to different reading ability,and then they were examined with the tests of metalinguistic awareness,short-term memory,word spelling and word reading.The data of the experiment were analyzed by hierarchical regression and the purpose was to compare the different effects of metalinguistic awareness on word spelling and word reading across the participants of different reading ability.Results showed that for the skilled readers,morphological awareness,phonological awareness and orthographic awareness could significantly predict word spelling,while morphological awareness and orthographic awareness contributed only to word reading.At the same time,for the unskilled readers,only phonological awareness could significantly explain some of the variance on word spelling and word reading.The conclusion was that effects of each dimension of metalinguistic awareness in English word spelling and word reading is different across the participants with different proficiency.Therefore it is essential to instruct different metalinguistic strategies in the teaching of word spelling and word reading according to the English learners’ proficiency. |
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