The Development Of Morphological Awareness And Its Effect On Reading In Learning Chinese As A Second Language

Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. The large number of homophone morpheme and homograph morpheme are particularly difficult for foreign students when they are learning Chinese.Basically, morphological awareness in Chinese consists of three facets: homophone awareness, homograph awareness and radical awareness. Our study was focused on the first two facets.A study was conducted to study the development of homophone awareness and homograph awareness in learning Chinese as a second language, and their effect on reading ability.88 foreign students participated in this experiment, whose Chinese level was categorized into intermediate and senior. Their homophone awareness, homograph awareness and reading ability were tested deliberately through a serial of paper-pencil tests. The results show that the morphological awareness develops with students'Chinese level; both homophone awareness and homograph awareness could predict reading;And homograph awareness was proved to be a more significant predictor. At the same time, the perdition of morphological awareness was just significant for the senior students not for the intermediate ones.The language background of the students does have an influence on the development of their homophone awareness. The homophone awareness relates more closely with spoken expression while the homograph awareness has a closer connection with reading ability.This study systematically investigated foreign students'morphological awareness for the first time, and the results support"morphological teaching method"in the view of cognition. Suggestion given by this study is that words should be taught in a whole as well as separated into morphemes so as to make a better teaching result.