Developmental stages in learning to read Chinese characters

This dissertation examined the development of strategies in learning to read Chinese through three studies that involved more than three hundred children from preschool to grade six. The results provide strong evidence of a model of learning to read Chinese that consists of three stages: the visual stage, the phonetic stage, and the orthographic stage.; Study One shows that preschoolers rely on a few distinctive visual features to read their first words. Compared with beginning English readers, Chinese beginning readers tend to stay in the visual stage longer. Study Two shows that kindergarteners have already developed some understanding of the phonetic strategy and the analogy strategy. The phonetic strategy refers to reading a phonetic compound character by using the information in the phonetic. The analogy strategy refers to reading a compound by making an analogy to another compound that shares the same phonetic. Second graders use both strategies more effectively than kindergartners. Another important fording of Study Two is that the phonetic strategy and analogy strategy develop simultaneously. No difference was found between the two strategies in either kindergartners or second graders. Study Three suggests that children in the fourth and sixth grade can use consistency information to learn families of characters sharing the same phonetic. They learn characters in consistent families better than semi-consistent families, followed by inconsistent families. Moreover, children can use family consistency information to pronounce novel characters.; The results of the dissertation support a three-stage model in learning to read Chinese. Preschoolers who just begin learning to read are in the first, visual stage. They remember the first words by relying on a few distinctive features. As early as kindergarten, children begin using phonological information. The ability to use the phonetic strategy and the analogy strategy develops simultaneously and improves as reading experience increases. By the second grade or even sometime earlier, children are in the phonetic stage in which they can use both phonological strategies reasonably well. Somewhere between second and fourth grade, children enter the orthographic stage, which is characterized by the use of consistency information contained in families of characters.