The Development Of Children's Counting Ability In China

This thesis, on basis of an investigation, the traceable approach, a longitudinal case as well as a statistical analysis of the data, probes into the development of counting ability among children in China, including when they grasp the cardinal word principle, when subitization emerges in them, and when they adopt the way of counting to answer"how many"questions. It also studies the maximum of counting, giving numbers, subitization and their relation.Second, classifiers of the children are also studied concerning the development of counting ability, it is concluded that learning classifiers do help children master the cardinal principle. In addition, the longitudinal study of one subject of YCM also proves this assumption.Chapter One and Two present an introduction to children's counting ability development by reviewing the previous theories and studies, as well as the aims of my present research.Chapter Three offers the detailed description on the development of children's counting ability from three experiments: the"give-a–number"input study; the"give-a–number"output study; the subitization study. The results indicate that the children between three and four years old is the critical age for grasping the cardinal word principle, and after four years old almost every child can learn it; that, before three-year-old, a child uses"subitization"to answer"how many"questions and after this age he is capable of real counting. During all these tests, performances of the eldest group are the best. What is more, the children between 02;06;00 and 04;06;00 in China don't show any significant difference in gender concerning the development of counting abilities.Chapter Four analyzes the data of the 294 subjects at two kindergartens in Xinxiang, He Nan Province. It is proved that learning classifiers does assist children to grasp the cardinal principle and help them know how to count the objects or other things.Chapter Five tries to check whether the previous assumptions are reasonable or not by a longitudinal study of the subject named YCM.The conclusion of the present study is that in children's growth, their counting ability develops faster and faster. In China, learning classifiers accelerates their ability of counting. But we are still unable to determine which theory is more scientific,"the principle-before"theory or"principle-after"one, for the data and the results can't verify us how the children master the principle in a sophisticated way though we already have some conjectures.