An Investigation of Cognitive, Linguistic and Reading Correlates in Children Learning Chinese and English as a First and Second Language

For the last two decades, an extensive line of research has focused on how Chinese children learn to read and write Chinese as a first language and English as a second language. Researchers identified a number of basic cognitive, metalinguistic and linguistic skills making contributions to the reading of Chinese and English words by native Chinese-speaking children, with some differences between the two languages. It appears that learning to read Chinese taps different cognitive, linguistic and orthographic skills than learning to read English.;Only very limited research has so far addressed the phenomenon from the angle of children with a non-Chinese language background, i.e. those learning alphabetic languages. It is not known, for example, if children learning Chinese as a second language might also go through similar cognitive and linguistic processes in learning to read Chinese as native Chinese-speaking children. The question is, how similar or dissimilar learning to read Chinese is for children with an alphabetic language background compared to native-speaking Chinese children. This research project addresses these questions by examining a group of children learning Chinese as a second language in a Hong Kong context.;A majority of Hong Kong international schools offer Chinese classes of at least 40 minutes each day, with Chinese being taught as a foreign language. A minority offers an English-Chinese bilingual curriculum, with at least 40% of all teaching done in Chinese. For this research, 102 8-9 year olds (62 native and 40 non-native Chinese-speaking children) from a bilingual school were assessed, and 88 8-9 year olds (47 native and 41 non-native Chinese-speaking children) from two schools teaching Chinese as a foreign language, i.e. one lesson each day. Most of the non-native Chinese-speaking children grew up with English as their first language (L1). Other children speak other alphabetic language such as Dutch, German, Spanish, or Korean as their L1.;For this research, parental evaluations of the children’s English and Chinese language proficiency, exposure and learning attitudes were collected to obtain data on the children’s language background. The children were tested on a range of cognitive, language, metalinguistic and literacy skills in both Chinese and English. In analyzing the data, the children were separated into a native and a non-native Chinese-speaking group based on the reported first language of each child’s mother.;Data from the two types of schools were analyzed separately. In both types of schools, native Chinese-speaking children performed similarly to non-native Chinese-speaking children on English language related tasks, but outperformed them in Chinese language related tasks. However, the two groups were similar in pure visual skill tasks, although native Chinese-speaking children outperformed the non-native children on visual-orthographic skills. Regression analyses showed that native Chinese-speaking children rely heavily on visual-orthographic skills and on their knowledge of Pinyin in Chinese word reading, while children speaking alphabetic languages rely on phonological awareness skills and pure visual skills in learning to read Chinese.;This research has confirmed the theory that learning to read Chinese exercises a somewhat different set of cognitive and linguistic skills than learning to read English. This research has strong implications for teaching Chinese as a second language. Children with an alphabetic language background rely on their first language experience in learning to read Chinese. Further research is needed to study this group of children.