A Study On The Correlativity Between English Phonological Awareness And English Reading Ability Among Chinese Children

In recent two decades, the correlation between phonological awareness and reading acquisition has been a heated issue in the domain of psycholinguistics in western countries. In English speaking countries, there have been a substantial amount of researches which indicate that phonological awareness is essential to reading. However, only a few studies have conducted in the context of EFL, especially dealing with Chinese primary school students to investigate on their English (as second language) phonological awareness. The present research attempts to study three aspects of Chinese primary school children in the field of phonological awareness: first, the correlation between their English phonological awareness and reading ability. Second, which levels of phonological awareness (syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme awareness) can be taken as a better indicators of reading acquisition?Third, the developmental features of English phonological awareness.Subjects of the study are 82 primary school students from grade three to grade five from an ordinary primary school in Harbin, who began formal English education in grade three. In the research, English phonological awareness (as well as levels of phonological awareness) and reading comprehension competence are tested. Findings from this empirical investigation are as follows: there is reciprocally predictive relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability. Among levels of phonological awareness, onset-rime awareness is the strongest indicator of reading acquisition. The development of English phonological awareness among Chinese children follow the general developmental trend of phonological awareness in English-speaking countries, that is, it develops from simple level (syllable awareness) to complicated one (phoneme awareness) . Broadly, research findings yielded by the present study are congruous with those previous studies abroad concerning the correlation between phonological awareness and reading ability as well as the developmental sequence of phonological awareness. However, there are two discrepancies between the present research and former studies abroad. One is that the present research proves onset-rime awareness as indicator of reading ability, whereas studies abroad confirm the importance of phoneme awareness on reading acquisition. The other distinction lies in the developmental features of final phoneme awareness, rhyme awareness, and onset awareness. The present study indicates that final phoneme awareness develops along with rhyme awareness and these two types of awareness develop precede onset awareness, while former researches abroad believe in the simultaneous development of onset awareness and final-phoneme awareness and the two develop after rhyme awareness. Theoretically, the findings have confirmed the existence of cross-language transfer from Chinese to English.