| This research aimed to explore the role of syntactic awareness in text reading comprehension and writing composition in Hong Kong Chinese children. Three studies were included. In Study 1, the question of whether syntactic awareness uniquely correlated with text reading comprehension in Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders was examined. A total of 89 fifth graders from two primary schools were recruited (45 boys, and 44 girls, mean age = 9.15 years, SD = .43). These children were administered a set of cognitive and linguistic measures including two tasks on syntactic awareness, i.e. syntactic judgment/correction task and conjunction cloze task. The results of Study1 indicated that syntactic skills, especially knowledge of conjunctive word usage, accounted for unique variance in text reading comprehension in Chinese children even when age, nonverbal IQ, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, semantic knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, morphosyntactic knowledge and working memory as well as word reading were statistically controlled.;The purpose of Study 2 was twofold. First, it aimed to investigate the longitudinal predictive effect of syntactic awareness on text reading comprehension in Hong Kong Chinese children. Second, the bidirectional relationship between syntactic awareness and text reading comprehension was explored. A total of 129 children (50 boys and 79 girls), from a ten-year longitudinal study, were sampled. They were tested on a set of cognitive and linguistic measures including the same two syntactic tasks used as those in Study1. Results showed that syntactic awareness was longitudinally predictive of text reading comprehension, even when the contributions of children's age, nonverbal and verbal abilities, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were taken into account. In addition, children's early reading comprehension was significantly correlated with their growth in syntactic awareness, suggesting a bidirectional relationship between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension.;In Study 3, the relationship between syntactic awareness and writing composition was examined in Hong Kong Chinese children. The participants and measures were the same as those in Study 2. In addition, those children were administered a writing composition task both at age 11 and 12. Results revealed that syntactic awareness was significantly predictive of children's writing, controlling for the contribution of age, nonverbal and verbal abilities, phonological awareness and morphological awareness. Children's performance in early writing compositions was also significantly associated with their later syntactic skills. This may suggest a reciprocal relationship between syntactic awareness and writing. In addition, syntactic error analyses revealed that children made certain syntactic errors in sentence construction and these errors were not random.;Findings in this study not only help us unravel the relations between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension and writing composition, contributing to a fuller understanding of the foundation of Chinese reading comprehension and writing composition, but also provide a potentially useful direction for the diagnosis of reading and writing difficulties for Chinese children.;Key Words: syntactic awareness, reading comprehension, writing composition, Chinese children. |
