Early skills that predict English reading ability: A longitudinal study of bilingual children from 5 to 10 years

Despite substantial research, the contribution of oral language skills acquired in Spanish to Spanish-English bilingual children's acquisition of English reading skill is unclear. The current study addressed this question with data on the oral language and pre-literacy skills of 101 Spanish-English bilingual learners at 5 years of age and their English word reading (i.e., decoding) and reading comprehension skills at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. Separate multilevel models using English language, Spanish language, and pre-literacy skills as predictors of these outcomes identified English phonological awareness, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts of print knowledge as positive predictors of word reading. A final model including all these significant predictors found only Spanish phonological awareness and concept of print to be significant predictors. Significant predictors of reading comprehension in separate models were English vocabulary, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts about print. In the final model, only English vocabulary and Spanish phonological awareness predicted English reading comprehension. These findings provide evidence that phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading across languages, consistent with the common underlying proficiency model of bilingual reading development. The finding that only English vocabulary predicts English reading comprehension suggests that vocabulary knowledge is not part of a common underlying proficiency but is language specific in its value to reading ability.

Neural Mechanisms of Learning and Consolidation of Morphologically Derived Words in a Novel Language: Evidence From Hebrew Speakers

We examined neural mechanisms associated with the learning of novel morphologically derived words in native Hebrew speakers within the Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) framework. Across four sessions, 28 participants were trained on an artificial language, which included two types of morphologically complex words: linear (root + suffix) with a salient structure, and non-linear (root interleaved with template), with a prominent derivational structure in participants' first language (L1). A third simple monomorphemic condition, which served as baseline, was also included. On the first and fourth sessions, training was followed by testing in an fMRI scanner. Our behavioural results showed decomposition of both types of complex words, with the linear structure more easily learned than the non-linear structure. Our fMRI results showed involvement of frontal areas, associated with decomposition, only for the non-linear condition, after just the first session. We also observed training-related increases in activation in temporal areas specifically for the non-linear condition, which was correlated with participants' L1 morphological awareness. These results demonstrate that morphological decomposition of derived words occurs in the very early stages of word learning, is influenced by L1 experience, and can facilitate word learning. However, in contrast to the CLS framework, we found no support for a shift from reliance on hippocampus to reliance on cortical areas in any of our conditions. Instead, our findings align more closely with recent theories showing a positive correlation between changes in hippocampus and cortical areas, suggesting that these representations co-exist and continue to interact with one another beyond initial learning.

Decomposition in early stages of learning novel morphologically derived words: The impact of linear vs. non-linear structure

We examined whether morphological decomposition takes place in early stages of learning a novel language, and whether morphological structure (linear vs. non-linear) influences decomposition. Across four sessions, 41 native-Hebrew speakers learned morphologically derived words in a novel morpho-lexicon, with two complex conditions: linear and non-linear; and a third simple condition with monomorphemic words. Participants showed faster learning of trained words in the linear condition, and better generalization to untrained words for both complex conditions compared to the simple condition, with better performance for linear than non-linear morphology. Learning the root morpheme, which provides a concrete meaning, was better than learning template/suffix morphemes, which are more abstract. Overall, our results suggest that saliency of discrete units plays an important role in decomposition in early stages of learning derived words, even for speakers highly familiar with the non-linear structure in their L1.

Shared and distinct neural correlates of first and second language morphological processing in bilingual brain

While morphology constitutes a crucial component of the human language system, the neural bases of morphological processing in the human brain remains to be elucidated. The current study aims at exploring the extent to which the second language (L2) morphological processing would resemble or differ from that of their first language (L1) in adult Chinese-English bilinguals. Bilingual participants were asked to complete a morphological priming lexical decision task drawing on derivational morphology, which is present for both Chinese and English, when their electrophysiological and optical responses were recorded concurrently. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) revealed a neural dissociation between morphological and semantic priming effects in the left fronto-temporal network, while L1 Chinese engaged enhanced activation in the left prefrontal cortex for morphological parsing relative to L2 English. In the early stage of lexical processing, cross-language morphological processing manifested a difference in degree, not in kind, as revealed by the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) effect. In addition, L1 and L2 shared both early and late structural parsing processes (P250 and 300 ~ 500 ms negativity, respectively). Therefore, the current results support a unified competition model for bilingual development, where bilinguals would primarily employ L1 neural resources for L2 morphological representation and processing.

Word reading transfer in two distinct languages in reading interventions: How Chinese-English bilingual children with reading difficulties learn to read

PURPOSE

Skills developed from literacy training in L1 are shown to transfer to reading in L2 when both languages involve an alphabetic writing system. However, transfer of literacy skills between a logographic L1 and an alphabetic L2 is less studied. This study examined whether the gain in literacy skills after an 8-week training on 1) Chinese character recognition or 2) English phonics, may generalize across the two languages in Chinese elementary students with reading disabilities.

METHODS

Chinese-speaking students identified with reading difficulties were randomly assigned to the Chinese intervention (Chinese character orthography training), English intervention (English phonics training), and control groups. Their Chinese and English literacy skills were measured before and after the interventions.

RESULTS

Though training on the orthography of Chinese characters significantly improved performance in Chinese word reading and Chinese orthographic awareness, our results did not provide evidence for the generalization of word-decoding skills from L1 Chinese to word reading in L2 English. However, phonics training in L2 English benefitted not only English word reading, but also cross-language word reading in L1 Chinese.

CONCLUSION

We postulated that teaching children analytical skills in decoding words in an alphabetic writing system might likewise benefit their word decoding in a logographic script.

Sentential inference bridging between lexical/grammatical knowledge and text comprehension among native Chinese speakers learning Japanese

The current study explored the role of sentential inference in connecting lexical/grammatical knowledge and overall text comprehension in foreign language learning. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), causal relationships were examined between four latent variables: lexical knowledge, grammatical knowledge, sentential inference, and text comprehension. The study analyzed 281 Chinese university students learning Japanese as a second language and compared two causal models: (1) the partially-mediated model, which suggests that lexical knowledge, grammatical knowledge, and sentential inference concurrently influence text comprehension, and (2) the wholly-mediated model, which posits that both lexical and grammatical knowledge impact sentential inference, which then further affects text comprehension. The SEM comparison analysis supported the wholly-mediated model, showing sequential causal relationships from lexical knowledge to sentential inference and then to text comprehension, without significant contribution from grammatical knowledge. The results indicate that sentential inference serves as a crucial bridge between lexical knowledge and text comprehension.

Syntactic awareness matters: uncovering reading comprehension difficulties in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children

This study examined whether syntactic awareness was related to reading comprehension difficulties in either first language (L1) Chinese or second language (L2) English, or both, among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Parallel L1 and L2 metalinguistic and reading measures, including syntactic word-order, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, reading comprehension, and cognitive measures of nonverbal intelligence and working memory, were administered to 224 fourth-graders. Five groups of comprehenders were identified using a regression approach: (1) 12 poor in Chinese-only (PC), (2) 18 poor in English-only (PE), (3) six poor in both Chinese and English (PB), (4) 14 average in both Chinese and English (AB), and (5) seven good in both (GB). The results of multivariate analyses of covariance showed that (1) the PB group performed worse than the AB and GB groups in both L1 Chinese and L2 English syntactic awareness; (2) the PC and PE groups performed worse than the AB and GB groups in Chinese syntactic awareness; (3) the PE group had lower performance than the PC, AB, and GB groups in English syntactic awareness; and (4) no significant group difference was found in L2 morphological awareness or vocabulary across both languages. By suggesting that weakness in syntactic awareness can serve as a universal indicator for identifying poor comprehenders in either or both L1 Chinese and L2 English among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children, these findings demonstrate the fundamental role of syntactic awareness in bilingual reading comprehension.

Profiles of Poor Decoders, Poor Comprehenders, and Typically Developing Readers in Adolescents Learning English as a Second Language

This study examined (a) the identification of various reading groups across languages in Chinese (L1) adolescents learning English as a second language (ESL), in terms of their word-reading and reading comprehension skills, (b) overlap in reading group membership across languages, and (c) the performance of the various reading groups on reading-related language comprehension measures in English. The participants were 246 eighth-grade students from an English-immersion program in a middle school in China. Latent profile analysis identified three reading groups in each language: (a) a typically developing reader group with average or above-average word-reading and reading comprehension, (b) a group with poor decoding/word-reading skills and weak reading comprehension, and (c) a group with poor reading comprehension in the absence of poor decoding/word reading. The overlap in profile characteristics across languages for typically developing readers and poor decoders was high (about 68% for typically developing readers and 54% for poor decoders), whereas the overlap for being poor comprehenders in each language was moderate (about 37%). Furthermore, poor decoders in either language performed more poorly than the typically developing and poor comprehender groups on word reading in the other language, while poor comprehenders in either language performed more poorly than the typically developing and poor decoder groups on reading comprehension in the other language. The comparison of the reading groups' performance on English reading-related language comprehension measures showed that poor comprehenders and poor decoders performed worse than typically developing readers. Implications for identification and instruction of ESL children with reading difficulties are discussed.

Cross-linguistic differences in the associations between morphological awareness and reading in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilinguals

This study aimed to clarify the relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilingual learners. Guided by theoretical perspectives on the associations between morphological awareness and word- versus sentence-level literacy skills, and their transfer between bilinguals' two languages, we asked bilingual children (N = 90; M = 8.07 years old) to complete dual-language literacy assessments. First, we observed cross-linguistic differences in the associations between morphology and reading. In English, morphological awareness was directly related to word reading and reading comprehension, whereas in Spanish, the association with reading comprehension was fully mediated by vocabulary and single word reading. Second, we observed cross-linguistic associations from English word reading to Spanish reading comprehension, and from Spanish reading comprehension to English reading comprehension. Our findings inform bilingual literacy theory by revealing both cross-linguistic differences and bidirectional associations between literacy skills across typologically-distinct orthographies. In particular, children's word-level skills transferred from the language of schooling (English) into their heritage language (Spanish), and their broader reading comprehension skills transferred from the heritage language to support English. Taken together, these findings support the value of bilingual heritage language maintenance for reading achievement in children's dominant language of literacy instruction.

Reading-Related Skills Associated With Acquisition of Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language: A Meta-Analysis

Previous studies have found the effect of cognitive skills (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, and rapid automatized naming) on reading ability, but the role of different reading-related skills in acquisition of Chinese as a second/foreign language (CSL/CFL) remains unexplored. Prior meta-analyses on the relationship between cognitive skills and reading have been conducted primarily in native English-speaking or Mandarin-speaking children. The purpose of the present meta-analysis was to examine the relationship between Chinese reading-related skills and Chinese word reading of CSL/CFL learners. A search of English and Chinese databases yielded 42 effect sizes, comprising 1103 subjects met the criteria for meta-analysis and were included in the final meta-analysis. Results revealed a moderate relationship between phonological awareness (r = 0.41), morphological awareness (r = 0.36), orthographic awareness (r = 0.38), rapid automatized naming (r = -0.32) and Chinese word reading in CSL/CFL learners. In addition, a moderating effect of length of study on the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese word reading (Q _B = 5.20, p = 0.023): phonological awareness and Chinese word reading correlated more strongly for beginning learners than for advanced learners. These results suggest importance of cognitive factors in the acquisition of Chinese word reading as a second language. Results also shed light on the impact of length of study on the influence from phonological awareness to the sensitive period of phonological learning for CSL/CFL learners.

Culture is not destiny, for reading: highlighting variable routes to literacy within writing systems

Cross-writing system research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience has yielded important findings regarding how a writing system's structure can influence the cognitive challenges of learning to read and the neural underpinnings of literacy. The current paper reviews these differences and extends the findings to demonstrate diversity in how skilled reading is accomplished within a single writing system, English. We argue that broad clusters of behavioral and neural patterns found across writing systems can also be found within subpopulations who display atypical routes to skilled English reading, subpopulations including Chinese-English bilinguals, deaf native signers, compensated readers, and distortion-sensitive readers. The patterns of interest include a tradeoff between the degree of reliance on phonological and morphological processing for skilled reading, a shift in attentional focus from smaller to larger orthographic units, and enhanced bilaterality of neural processing during word reading. Lastly, we consider how understanding atypical routes to reading may apply to other writing systems.

Concurrent and longitudinal contributions of phonological awareness to early adolescent Chinese reading acquisition

This study investigated universal and language-specific phonological awareness in reading development among Chinese early adolescent students. Seventy-six children participated in this study and completed a series of reading tasks at two data collection points across Grades 5 and 6. In Grade 5, universal phonological awareness (syllable, onset, rhyme, and phoneme awareness), language-specific phonological awareness (tone awareness) as well as character recognition and production measurements were administered to the participants. Lexical inferencing ability was measured in Grade 6. Character recognition and lexical inference were coded as the outcome variables. Subsequent multiple regression analyses showed that Time 1 (Grade 5) language-universal onset and phoneme awareness predicted character recognition and production at Time 1. More strikingly, the study demonstrated that language-specific tone awareness exerted a longitudinal effect on later lexical inferencing ability after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. Results underscored both the universality and language specificity of phonological awareness and provided empirical evidence to substantiate the facilitative role of early language-specific psycholinguistic grain size in later reading performance.

The Contribution of Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge to Chinese as a Second Language Reading Comprehension: A Path Analysis

This study explored the role of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension ability of Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners. Two-hundred and nine CSL students participated in this study and completed a series of measures including two tests of morphological awareness (morpheme discrimination test and compound structure test), a vocabulary knowledge test and a reading comprehension test. Drawing upon path analysis, this study found that morphological awareness contributed to vocabulary knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge is predictive to L2 Chinese reading comprehension. The results also indicated that morphological awareness significantly indirectly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that although both morpheme awareness and compound structure awareness contributed to vocabulary knowledge and L2 Chinese reading, morpheme awareness made more contribution compared to compound structure awareness.

Morphological Awareness in L2 Chinese Reading Comprehension: Testing of Mediating Routes

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

Cross-Linguistic Morphological Awareness in Chinese Heritage Language Reading Acquisition

The study aimed to explore cross-linguistic contributions of morphological awareness to Chinese reading acquisition among Chinese heritage language (CHL) learners who had grown up speaking Chinese at home, received English medium education throughout schooling, and were studying Chinese at the time of the study. The sample thus represents a growing number of heritage-language (HL) speakers in US schools whose literacy development is not yet well documented. Little is known, to date, as to how HL literacy development benefits from the linguistic and metalinguistic resources gained through early oral language exposure. In the study, college-level CHL students (N = 195) completed a series of reading measures in their dominant language (English) and heritage language (Chinese). Path analysis was employed to test the cross-linguistic relationships in morphological awareness and lexical inference ability. The findings showed that dominant-language morphological awareness was significantly related to lexical inference skills in two languages. More critically, the current study tested the direct and indirect contributions of dominant-language morphological awareness to HL lexical inference. The results showed that dominant-language morphological awareness contributed only indirectly to HL lexical inference through HL morphological awareness and dominant-language lexical inference. Based on the findings, four tentative conclusions can be drawn: morphological awareness and lexical inference skills transfer across languages; cross-linguistic interaction only occurs between corresponding subskills; transferred subskills are modified to accommodate the target language properties; and the benefits of transferred subskills are realized only through their corresponding subskills in the target language. Practical implications of the findings are also discussed regarding HL instruction and learning.

Contribution of Vocabulary Knowledge to Reading Comprehension Among Chinese Students: A Meta-Analysis

This study investigated the correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. To address the correlation picture under Chinese logographical scripts, the researchers investigated the potential explanation for the correlation via Reading Stage, Information Gap, Content-based Approach, and Cognition and Creativity Theory approaches. This study undertook a meta-analysis to synthesize 89 independent samples from primary school stage to Master's degree stage. Results showed the correlation picture as an inverted U-shape, supporting the idea that vocabulary knowledge contributed a large proportion of variance on text comprehension and might also support the independent hypothesis of the impact of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension. In each education stage, the correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension was independent in that it did not interact with any significant moderators. This study informed that the vocabulary knowledge not only determined text comprehension progress through facial semantic meaning identification but also suggested that the coordinate development of vocabulary knowledge, grammatical knowledge, and inference would be better in complexity comprehension task performance.

Morphological Intervention in Promoting Higher-Order Reading Abilities among College-Level Second Language Learners

Reading success in a second language (L2) is vital to sustainable language and academic development because reading serves as a tool to absorb and learn new knowledge. Particularly in the context of college English as a foreign language (EFL), students constantly face the challenge to read English material to develop content knowledge. The current study investigated the effect of explicit morphological instruction on L2 students’ higher-order inferencing and comprehension abilities. Sixty-two Chinese collegiate EFL students who were taking an intensive reading course (31 in the treatment class and 31 in the control class) participated in this study. The morphological intervention in the treatment class focused on identifying, decomposing, analyzing, associating, applying word parts in context. The control class received no explicit instruction in morphological awareness. After one semester of instruction, a series of morphology, inferencing and comprehension measures were administered to the participating students. The results showed that the didactic intervention of morphological awareness contributed to morphological knowledge and word-meaning inferencing ability, whereas there was no significant relationship between morphological intervention and text-based inference and comprehension abilities. The findings suggest that the intervention has a direct impact on word learning ability; however, higher-order processing skills may not directly benefit from it in a short period of time. Given that reading comprehension requires fine-tuned understandings of both local meanings and global contextual information, morphological awareness may not have an immediate effect on comprehension. Applied implications are also discussed in relation to effective morphological instruction and reading development in L2 contexts.

Reading Comprehension and Metalinguistic Knowledge in Chinese Readers: A Meta-Analysis

Metalinguistic knowledge has a facilitative effect on reading comprehension. This meta-analysis examined the relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese students. By focusing on both Chinese and English scripts' reading comprehension performance, this study synthesized 46 studies with 73 independent samples that represented 10,793 Chinese students from primary school to university levels. We found that in both Chinese and English scripts' reading, morphological awareness had the strongest correlation with reading comprehension, whereas both phonological awareness and orthographical skill had a similar medium correlation with reading comprehension. All three metalinguistic knowledge, which was not significantly influenced by the selected moderators of grade group, area, language type, and assessment, had an independent correlation with reading comprehension. The results suggested that reading stages did not significantly impact the function of metalinguistic knowledge on both Chinese and English scripts' reading comprehension for Chinese students. In addition, for Chinese students, morphological awareness plays a more important role than phonological awareness and orthographical skill in both Chinese and English scripts' reading comprehension.

Bidirectional Cross-Linguistic Association of Phonological Skills and Reading Comprehension: Evidence From Hong Kong Chinese-English Bilingual Readers

This study examined the roles of first-language (L1) Chinese and second-language (L2) English phonological skills in English and Chinese reading comprehension, respectively, and their association with reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We tested 258 second graders on nonverbal intelligence, working memory, phonological skills, word reading, and reading comprehension, in both Chinese and English. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that Chinese phonological skills contributed to English reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of English phonological skills and English word reading. In contrast, English phonological skills contributed only indirectly to Chinese reading comprehension through L1 Chinese phonological and word reading skills. Furthermore, poor Chinese readers, poor English readers, and poor readers in both Chinese and English exhibited lower levels of lexical tone awareness than average readers, even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence, word reading, and working memory. Poor Chinese readers outperformed poor English readers and poor readers in both Chinese and English on Chinese segmental phonological awareness, and their performance was comparable to average readers. These findings suggest that both suprasegmental and segmental phonological skills are critical to the development of reading comprehension across L1 Chinese and L2 English in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children.

The Relationship Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension Among Chinese Children

The present study examined the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, using a 1-year longitudinal study with a sample of 439 Chinese-speaking students in Grades 1, 3, and 5, respectively. Children's text reading and three components of morphological awareness: homophone awareness, homograph awareness and compounding awareness were measured. After controlling for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, IQ, rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness measured at the initial level, the structural equation modeling results indicated that children's compounding awareness made a significant direct contribution to reading comprehension only from Grade 5 to 6. Children's reading comprehension also made a unique contribution to compounding awareness from Grade 5 to 6. Thus a reciprocal relationship between compounding awareness and reading comprehension was found for Grade 5 to 6. Reading comprehension in Grades 3 and 5 predicted homophone awareness in Grades 4 and 6 were marginal significance, respectively, but initial homophone awareness did not predict later reading comprehension across grades. Furthermore, there no unique connection between homograph awareness and reading comprehension across grades. These findings suggest a dynamic relationship between different aspects of morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children across elementary school years.

Morphological awareness predicts the growth rate of Chinese character reading

In this longitudinal study, we assessed 88 Hong Kong Chinese typically developing kindergarteners' Chinese character reading accuracy four times with 6-month intervals over 1.5 years with the first testing point in the fall of the second year of kindergarten (K2), during which morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, visual-spatial relationships, and nonverbal IQ were tested (Time 1). The latent growth curve modeling showed that reading development in Chinese of typically developing kindergarteners followed a cumulative linear trajectory, suggesting that children with higher initial reading ability develop reading ability at a faster rate. Additionally, morphological awareness at K2 positively and uniquely predicted a linear growth pattern of character reading between K2 and K3 over 1.5 years, a period in which formal teaching and learning Chinese takes place in Hong Kong. Contributing to the literature, these findings highlighted the unique significance of morphological awareness in the growth rate of reading: Typically developing children with better early morphological awareness tend to have a higher initial point of reading ability and, more importantly, a faster growth rate, resulting in a wider discrepancy of developmental outcomes between low- and high- performers. The results suggest that greater attention should be focused on the development of morphological awareness in early readers, given its salient role in Chinese reading development.

The Impact of Morphological Awareness on Word Reading and Dictation in Chinese Early Adolescent Readers With and Without Dyslexia

This study investigated the role of morphological awareness in understanding Chinese word reading and dictation among Chinese-speaking adolescent readers in Hong Kong as well as the cognitive-linguistic profile of early adolescent readers with dyslexia. Fifty-four readers with dyslexia in Grades 5 and 6 were compared with 54 chronological age-matched (CA) typical readers on the following measures of cognitive-linguistic and literacy skills: morphological awareness, phonological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, vocabulary knowledge, verbal short-term memory (STM), Chinese word reading, and dictation (or spelling). The results indicated that early adolescent readers with dyslexia performed less well than the typical readers on all cognitive-linguistic and literacy measures except the phonological measures. Both groups' scores showed substantial correlations between morphological awareness and Chinese word reading and dictation. Visual-orthographic knowledge and rapid naming were also associated with dictation in early adolescent readers with and without dyslexia, respectively. Moderated multiple regression analyses further revealed that morphological awareness and rapid naming explained unique variance in word reading and dictation for the readers with dyslexia and typical readers separately after controlling readers' age and group effect. These results highlight the potential importance of morphological awareness and rapid naming in Chinese word reading and writing in Chinese early adolescents' literacy development and impairment.

The Development of Morphological Awareness in Young Bilinguals: Effects of Age and L1 Background

PURPOSE

Current understanding about the effect of first language (L1) background on morphological awareness (MA) development in those who are bilingual is largely limited to school-aged second-language learners. This study examined the development of MA in bilingual Mandarin-English (ManEngBi) and Spanish-English (SpaEngBi) children ages 4 to 7 years, whose L1 is predominated by compounding and derivation, respectively.

METHOD

We targeted specific word formation rules that develop within different developmental time frames. Forty-two ManEngBi, 30 SpaEngBi, and 27 English monolingual children divided into 4- to 5-year-old and 6- to 7-year-old age groups produced English words using compounding, the derivational agentive -er suffix, and the derivational characteristic -y suffix for both real and novel word roots.

RESULTS

The characteristic -y suffix consistently elicited the poorest performance. This finding held true regardless of language group, age, or novelty of prompts. Both older SpaEngBi and English monolingual children outperformed older ManEngBi children in the characteristic -y suffix, whereas the three groups performed comparably on the other two rules at both age intervals. Error analysis further suggested influence of cross-linguistic features.

CONCLUSIONS

L1 influence on English MA development is sensitive to the developmental time frame of word formation rules. Future studies on the development of MA in bilingual children should adopt a more fine-grained approach and include a wider age range.

Morphological Awareness in Literacy Acquisition of Chinese Second Graders: A Path Analysis

The present study tested a path diagram regarding the contribution of morphological awareness (MA) to early literacy acquisition among Chinese-speaking second graders ([Formula: see text]). Three facets of MA were addressed, namely derivational awareness, compound awareness and compound structure awareness. The model aimed to test a theory of causal order among measures of MA and literacy outcomes. Drawing upon multivariate path analysis, direct and indirect effects of MA were analyzed to identify their role in literacy performance among young children. Results revealed that all three facets of MA made significant contributions to lexical inference ability. In addition, compound awareness showed a unique and significant contribution to vocabulary knowledge. It was also observed that lexical inference ability had a mediating effect predictive of both vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Moreover, vocabulary knowledge mediated the effect of MA on reading comprehension. However, no significant contribution of MA to reading comprehension was found after controlling for lexical inference ability and vocabulary knowledge.

Concurrent correlates of Chinese word recognition in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

The aim of this study was to explore the relative contributions of phonological, semantic radical, and morphological awareness to Chinese word recognition in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Measures of word recognition, general intelligence, phonological, semantic radical, and morphological awareness were administered to 32 DHH and 35 hearing children in Hong Kong. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that tone, semantic radical, and morphological awareness made independent contributions to word recognition in DHH children after the effects of age and intelligence were statistically controlled for. Semantic radical and morphological awareness was found to explain significantly more variance than tone awareness in predicting word recognition in DHH children. This study has replicated previous evidence regarding the importance of semantic radical and morphological awareness in Chinese word recognition in hearing children and extended its significance to DHH children.

Effects of metalinguistic awareness on reading comprehension and the mediator role of reading fluency from grades 2 to 4

Purpose

This study examined the contribution of metalinguistic awareness including morphological awareness, phonological awareness and orthographical awareness to reading comprehension, and the role of reading fluency as a mediator of the effects of metalinguistic awareness on reading comprehension from grades 2 to 4.

Methods

Four hundred and fifteen elementary students in China mainland were administered a test battery that included measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographical awareness, reading fluency, reading comprehension and IQ. Hierarchical regression and structural equation models (SEM) were used to analyze the data.

Results

Morphological awareness uniquely explained 9%, 10% and 13% variance of reading comprehension respectively from grade 2 to grade 4, however, phonological awareness and orthographical awareness did not contribute to reading comprehension; Reading fluency partially mediated the effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in grades 2-4.

Conclusions

These findings indicated that reading fluency and morphological awareness should be facilitated in the Chinese instruction. Morphological awareness played an important role in Chinese reading and affected reading comprehension in grades 2 to 4; Reading fluency was a significant link between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in grades 2-4.

The effect of sign language structure on complex word reading in Chinese deaf adolescents

The present study was carried out to investigate whether sign language structure plays a role in the processing of complex words (i.e., derivational and compound words), in particular, the delay of complex word reading in deaf adolescents. Chinese deaf adolescents were found to respond faster to derivational words than to compound words for one-sign-structure words, but showed comparable performance for two-sign-structure words. For both derivational and compound words, response latencies to one-sign-structure words were shorter than to two-sign-structure words. These results provide strong evidence that the structure of sign language affects written word processing in Chinese. Additionally, differences between derivational and compound words in the one-sign-structure condition indicate that Chinese deaf adolescents acquire print morphological awareness. The results also showed that delayed word reading was found in derivational words with two signs (DW-2), compound words with one sign (CW-1), and compound words with two signs (CW-2), but not in derivational words with one sign (DW-1), with the delay being maximum in DW-2, medium in CW-2, and minimum in CW-1, suggesting that the structure of sign language has an impact on the delayed processing of Chinese written words in deaf adolescents. These results provide insight into the mechanisms about how sign language structure affects written word processing and its delayed processing relative to their hearing peers of the same age.

Morphological structure processing during word recognition and its relationship to character reading among third-grade Chinese children

In the present study, we explored the characteristics of morphological structure processing during word recognition among third grade Chinese children and its possible relationship with Chinese character reading. By using the modified priming lexical decision paradigm, a significant morphological structure priming effect was found in the subject analysis when reaction time difference was considered as dependent variable. In the regression analyses, the children's implicit morphological structure processing demonstrated a significant effect on Chinese character reading, even though its effect became non-significant when morphological awareness was entered. We achieved this result after controlling for the children's age, non-verbal intelligence, and phonological awareness. These findings indicate that third grade Chinese children are sensitive to morphological structure information in the processing of compound words. Moreover, such sensitivity is, to some extent, a good predictor of Chinese children's word reading performance.

Naming abilities in low-proficiency second language learners

Difficulties in second language (L2) learning are often associated with recognizable learning difficulties in native language (L1), such as in dyslexia. However, some individuals have low L2 proficiency but intact L1 reading skills. These L2 learners experience frequent tip-of-the-tongue states while naming in L1, which indicates that they have a weakness in retrieval of phonological codes of words. The authors hypothesized that if naming ability is shared across languages, this difficulty would reemerge in L2 naming, which was tested using the tip-of-the-tongue experimental paradigm. Consistent with this hypothesis, low-proficiency L2 learners (n = 15) reported more tip-of-the-tongue states, more frequently mispronounced correctly retrieved words, and benefited less from phonological cuing compared to high-proficiency L2 learners (n = 23). It is notable that low-proficiency L2 learners performed worse than individuals with dyslexia (n = 16) on some of these measures, despite the same level of L2 proficiency. These results indicate that L2 naming difficulties of low-proficiency L2 learners are a manifestation not merely of their low L2 proficiency but rather of a general weakness in phonological word form retrieval, which is shared across languages. More broadly, the study provides further evidence for the existence of a distinct profile of cognitive weaknesses characteristic of the behavioral phenotype of low-proficiency L2 learners.

Uniqueness and Overlap: Characteristics and Longitudinal Correlates of Native Chinese Children's Writing in English as a Foreign Language

Longitudinal predictors of writing composition in Chinese and English written by the same 153 Hong Kong nine-year-old children were tested, and their production errors within the English essays across ten categories, focusing on punctuation, spelling, and grammar, were compared to errors made by ninety American nine-year-olds writing on the same topic. The correlation between quality of the compositions in Chinese and English was .53. In stepwise regression analyses examining early predictors at ages between five and nine years, tasks of speed or fluency were consistently uniquely associated with Chinese writing composition; measures of English vocabulary knowledge, word reading, or both were consistently uniquely associated with English writing quality. Compared to the American children, Chinese children's writing reflected significantly higher proportions of errors in all grammatical categories but did not differ in punctuation or spelling. Findings underscore both similarities and differences in writing at different levels across languages.

The stability of literacy-related cognitive contributions to Chinese character naming and reading fluency

The present study examined the developmental issue of cognitive factors that explain Chinese literacy. Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, short-term memory, orthographic awareness and morphological awareness and two literacy tasks (character naming and reading fluency) were administered to 408 second-graders, 428 fourth-graders and 496 six-graders. Results from linear regression analysis and path analysis model showed that the five reading-related cognitive constructs explained unique variances in character naming. Second, character naming is primary for reading fluency after controlling other cognitive constructs; third, the relation between the cognitive factors and literacy changes significantly as a function of reading skills. Results give a clear direction to understanding Chinese reading development.

Contributions of syntactic awareness to reading in Chinese-speaking adolescent readers with and without dyslexia

This study investigated the relative contribution of syntactic awareness to Chinese reading among Chinese-speaking adolescent readers with and without dyslexia. A total of 78 junior high school students in Hong Kong, 26 dyslexic adolescent readers, 26 average adolescent readers of the same age (chronological age control group) and 26 younger readers matched with the same reading level (reading-level group) participated and were administered measures of IQ, syntactic awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, working memory, word reading, and reading comprehension. Results showed that dyslexic readers scored significantly lower than chronological age but similarly to reading level control groups in most measures, especially in the areas of syntactic skills. Analyses of individual data also revealed that over half of the dyslexic readers exhibited certain aspects of deficits in syntactic skills. In regression analyses, syntactic skills were the strongest predictors of ability in word reading and reading comprehension measures. This study highlights the uniquely important correlates of syntactic skills in Chinese reading acquisition and impairment.