The Role Of Phonological, Morphological And Orthographic Awareness In Chinese Children’s Character Reading

Phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA) and orthographic awareness (OA) are cognitive factors concerning the awareness of and access to phonetic, morphemic and orthographic structure of words. They have been identified as important factors in early literacy acquisition. The aims of the present study are to figure out developmental differences in PA, MA and OA across grade levels and to explore relations between PA, MA, OA and Chinese character reading as well as relative contributions of PA, MA and OA to Chinese character reading. There are three research questions to be addressed in the study, namely:1) Do children’s levels of PA, MA and OA show developmental trends across grades?2) Are there any relationships among PA, MA, OA and Chinese character reading?3) Do PA, MA and OA make a significant and unique contribution to Chinese character reading?To answer these questions, a comprehensive battery of measures of PA, MA and OA along with a Chinese character reading task were administered to36second-grade students and37fourth-grade students in Jinan, Shandong Province. PA measures include onset, rime and tone oddity along with syllable awareness test. MA measure includes compound analogy task and OA is measured by two subtests:radical position judgment and radical form judgment. After the collection of data, independent sample t-test, Pearson correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted. Independent sample t-test indicated that children demonstrated improvements in PA and OA across grade levels while their MA showed significant changes. According to correlation analysis, there were significant and positive associations among PA, MA and Chinese character reading. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that PA explained unique variance in Chinese character reading after controlling age and grade and MA made a significant contribution to Chinese character reading after controlling age, grade and PA. In contrast, OA was not significantly associated with Chinese character reading.The study demonstrates that PA and MA play a central role in Chinese children’s literacy development and underscores the importance of tapping into multiple sources of metalinguistic knowledge when providing instruction in early literacy. However, owing to the relatively small sample size and the complexity of PA, MA and OA, limitations still exist in the study. More efforts are needed for future research to get a comprehensive and clear understanding of the relations among PA, MA, OA and Chinese literacy outcome.