Same or different: Chinese character reading and word reading of young readers with development

AbstractThe present study aimed to investigate whether and how Chinese single character reading and 2-character word reading can reflect somewhat different processes. Tasks of Chinese rapid automatized naming (RAN), morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, along with vocabulary knowledge and nonverbal intelligence tasks, were administered to 283 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners (Mean age = 66.08 months,SD = 5.15), who were followed up one year later at grade one. Results demonstrated that, concurrently, morphological awareness and RAN explained unique variance in Chinese word reading at kindergarten when character reading was statistically controlled; character reading had no unique cognitive-l inguistic correlates when word reading was statistically controlled. Longitudinally, word reading at grade one was predicted by character reading at kindergarten. In contrast, character reading at grade one could not be predicted by word reading at kindergarten. These findings suggest that Chinese c hildren’s processing of 2-character words and single characters should be treated differently in Chinese reading acquisition.
Source: Reading and Writing - Category: Child Development Source Type: research