Morphological awareness in Chinese: Unique associations of homophone awareness and lexical compounding to word reading and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese children

ABSTRACT An in-depth exploration of the associations of two aspects of morphological awareness in Chinese—homophone awareness and lexical compounding awareness—to Chinese word reading and vocabulary knowledge was the primary focus of the present study. Among 154 9-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children, both lexical compounding and homophone awareness were significantly associated with word reading (r = .54 for compounding, r = .38 for homophones) and vocabulary knowledge (r = .41 for compounding, r = .53 for homophones). However, with autoregressors additionally statistically controlled, homophone awareness remained uniquely associated with vocabulary but not word reading; lexical compounding was uniquely associated with both word reading and vocabulary. Path analyses best illustrated this pattern. Both morphological awareness constructs are likely bidirectionally associated with word reading and vocabulary knowledge. However, homophone awareness is more centrally associated with vocabulary knowledge because it taps specific, existing morpheme knowledge. In contrast, lexical compounding requires structural understanding of one's language, which seems to be helpful for both learning to read and vocabulary acquisition in Chinese.

[1]  C. McBride-Chang,et al.  A Comparison of Phonological Awareness, Lexical Compounding, and Homophone Training for Chinese Word Reading in Hong Kong Kindergartners , 2012 .

[2]  Catherine McBride-Chang,et al.  Longitudinal predictors of very early Chinese literacy acquisition , 2011 .

[3]  Simpson W. L. Wong,et al.  Early predictors of dyslexia in Chinese children: familial history of dyslexia, language delay, and cognitive profiles. , 2011, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[4]  Catherine McBride-Chang,et al.  Holistic versus analytic processing: evidence for a different approach to processing of Chinese at the word and character levels in Chinese children. , 2010, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[5]  C. McBride-Chang,et al.  What Is Morphological Awareness? Tapping Lexical Compounding Awareness in Chinese Third Graders. , 2010 .

[6]  H. Shu,et al.  Morphological Awareness, Orthographic Knowledge, and Spelling Errors: Keys to Understanding Early Chinese Literacy Acquisition , 2009 .

[7]  S. Lun.  Lexical Items with English Explanations for Fundamental Chinese Learning in Hong Kong Schools , 2009 .

[8]  Esther Geva,et al.  The role of compound awareness in Chinese children’s vocabulary acquisition and character reading , 2009 .

[9]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Morphological Awareness and Chinese Children's Literacy Development: An Intervention Study , 2009 .

[10]  Erich Hartmann.  Phonological awareness in preschoolers with spoken language impairment: toward a better understanding of causal relationships and effective intervention. a constructive comment on Rvachew and Grawburg's (2006) study. , 2008, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[11]  C. McBride-Chang,et al.  Morphological awareness and early and advanced word recognition and spelling in Dutch , 2008 .

[12]  H. Shu,et al.  What's in a word? Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in three languages , 2008, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[13]  T. Salthouse,et al.  Vocabulary test format and differential relations to age. , 2008, Psychology and aging.

[14]  Catherine McBride-Chang,et al.  Syllable, Phoneme, and Tone: Psycholinguistic Units in Early Chinese and English Word Recognition , 2008 .

[15]  C. McBride-Chang,et al.  Phonological awareness and morphological awareness: differential associations to regular and irregular word recognition in early Korean Hangul readers , 2008 .

[16]  W. Chung,et al.  Morphological awareness and learning to read Chinese , 2007 .

[17]  P. David Pearson,et al.  A Vocabulary assessment: What we know and what we need to learn , 2008 .

[18]  H. Cheung,et al.  Metalinguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) , 2006 .

[19]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Explicit instruction in orthographic structure and word morphology helps Chinese children learn to write characters , 2006 .

[20]  V. Mann,et al.  Changes in Letter Sound Knowledge Are Associated with Development of Phonological Awareness in Pre-School Children. , 2006 .

[21]  Catherine McBride-Chang,et al.  Understanding Chinese Developmental Dyslexia: Morphological Awareness as a Core Cognitive Construct. , 2006 .

[22]  H. Shu,et al.  Changing models across cultures: associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. , 2005, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[23]  Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow,et al.  The role of morphological awareness in children's vocabulary acquisition in English , 2005 .

[24]  H. Shu,et al.  Morphological Awareness Uniquely Predicts Young Children's Chinese Character Recognition , 2003 .

[25]  W. Nagy,et al.  Relationship of morphology and other language skills to literacy skills in at-risk second-grade readers and at-risk fourth-grade writers , 2003 .

[26]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and English , 2003 .

[27]  S. Lyster.  The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development , 2002 .

[28]  A. Biemiller,et al.  Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. , 2001 .

[29]  J. Mitchell.  Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing , 2001 .

[30]  Marilyn Jager Adams,et al.  Beginning To Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. , 1991 .

[31]  William E. Nagy,et al.  Learning Word Meanings From Context During Normal Reading , 1987 .

[32]  Eve V. Clark,et al.  Compound Nouns and Category Structure in Young Children. , 1985 .

[33]  A. Wilkinson,et al.  Metalinguistic Knowledge of Pragmatic Rules in School-Age Children , 1984 .

[34]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  How Many Words are There in Printed School English , 1984 .

[35]  M. A. Merrill,et al.  Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale , 1972 .

[36]  J. Berko.  The Child's Learning of English Morphology , 1958 .

[37]  Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow,et al.  Dialogic reading and morphology training in Chinese children: effects on language and literacy. , 2008, Developmental psychology.

[38]  Margaret Theresa Shakibai.  The efficacy of a training program to teach kindergarteners lexical ambiguity detection , 2008 .

[39]  J. Kirby,et al.  A review of the evidence on morphological processing in dyslexics and poor readers: a strength or weakness? , 2008 .

[40]  Vladimir M. Sloutsky,et al.  Learning Words from Context , 2008 .

[41]  Catherine E. Snow,et al.  The Critical Period for Language Acquisition : Evidence from Second Language Learning , 2007 .

[42]  W. Nagy,et al.  Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. , 2006 .

[43]  Suzanne M. Adlof,et al.  Learning Vocabulary through Reading , 2006 .

[44]  Jerome L. Packard,et al.  Chinese Children's Reading Acquisition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Issues. , 2002 .

[45]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Facets of Metalinguistic Awareness that Contribute to Chinese Literacy , 2002 .

[46]  William E. Nagy,et al.  The Role of Morphological Awareness in Learning to Read chinese , 2002 .

[47]  Joseph K. Torgesen,et al.  Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing , 1997 .

[48]  Joanne F. Carlisle,et al.  Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. , 1995 .

[49]  E. Finegan.  Language : Its Structure and Use , 1989 .

[50]  Mm. Liabre.  Standard Progressive Matrices , 1984 .

[51]  E. Clark.  Awareness of Language: Some Evidence from what Children Say and Do , 1978 .

[52]  Willem J. M. Levelt,et al.  The child's conception of language , 1978 .