The Effects Of Phonological Awareness,Morphological Awareness,and Lexical Prosodic Awareness On Chinese Middle School EFL Learners’ Word-level Spelling

Word-level spelling,like reading,is an essential skill that children should acquire in early language acquisition.However,while studies on Chinese children’s English reading comprehension have received much attention in the past few decades,studies on English WS(Word-level Spelling)ability are relatively scarce.In a few studies on WS ability,both MA(Morphological Awareness)and PA(Phonological Awareness)have shown significant correlations with WS.However,there is a controversy over which phonological component plays the most significant role in WS.In addition,although the role of lexical PrA(Prosodic Awareness)in WS has attracted increasing attention in recent years,the pathway of how lexical PrA affects WS requires further demonstration.Meanwhile,the complex interrelationships among the three meta-linguistic consciousness mentioned above and their relations to VK(Vocabulary Knowledge)have been suggested.However,few studies have simultaneously examined the relationships between these factors and English WS.Besides,the majority of previous research on the relations between PA,MA,lexical PrA,and English WS has focused on testing primary school students or learners of other languages,while Chinese EFL(English as a Foreign Language)middle school learners are relatively under-researched.Thus,this study selected participants in eighth grade from one middle school in Bozhou City as participants to respectively explore the roles of the two dimensions of PA,MA,and lexical PrA in predicting Chinese middle school learners’ English WS after accounting for age,nonverbal intelligence as well as VK,and further delved into all the possible mediating effects between these factors and English WS.The results of this empirical study suggested that:1)both dimensions of PA were significantly related to WS.Meanwhile,both phonemic awareness and syllable awareness could significantly predict WS after controlling for other variables.2)MA played a significant role in predicting WS.3)lexical PrA could predict WS directly and indirectly through the mediating effects of phonemic awareness,MA,and VK.This study provides more evidence for the relationship between PA,MA,lexical PrA,and English WS.It verifies the significant role of lexical PrA in predicting other metalinguistic awareness and enriches studies on the mediating role of some variables between lexical PrA and English WS.In addition,this study provides suggestions for English education and English learning in Chinese middle schools and hopes to offer some insights for future studies.