Relationships between reading comprehension and its components in young Chinese-as-a-second-language learners

Wong, Yu Ka

doi:10.1007/s11145-016-9708-y

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Like most CSL learners, Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students who participated in this study recognized the componential radicals when reading characters (Shen & Ke, 2007; Williams, 2013; Wong, 2017b), and their orthographic skills played a crucial role in their Chinese word reading (Zhou & McBride, 2015; Zhou et al, 2018). Previous studies indicate that the orthographic skills of young CSL learners aid their further literacy development in reading comprehension (Leong et al, 2011; Shum et al, 2014; Wong, 2017a) and writing (Leong et al, 2018; Wong, 2018a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Orthographic Awareness and Chinese Reading in Hong Kong’s Young CSL Learners

Wong

2020

ECNU Review of Education

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Purpose: This study investigates young Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners’ Chinese character reading performance and its relationship with their orthographic awareness. There is a pressing need to gain a better understanding of Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students’ CSL acquisition, so that more effective instruction can be provided. Design/Approach/Methods: A total of 157 Hong Kong ethnic minority CSL students in Grade 4 were evaluated using a range of assessments: orthographic awareness in identifying and utilizing character components, listening comprehension for vocabulary terms and short texts, and reading Chinese character lists with single- and two-character words. Findings: The students performed consistently across the two lists but made fewer errors when reading the two-character word list, most of which were orthographical. Multiple regression analysis showed that the students’ orthographic awareness contributed significantly to their character reading. Originality/Value: The findings suggest that orthographic awareness can help ethnic minority CSL learners improve their Chinese character reading skills. Chinese classes provided for such students, and for CSL learners in general, should place greater focus on literacy training.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Orthographic Awareness and Chinese Reading in Hong Kong’s Young CSL Learners

Wong

2020

ECNU Review of Education

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“…For example, reading comprehension depends on successful word reading, and word decoding is an important part of word reading (Perfetti, 2007). However, the impact of word decoding skills was found to be modulated by the transparency of the orthography, being stronger and tending to remain for a longer period in languages with opaque orthography (Florit and Cain, 2011;Joshi et al, 2015;Wong, 2016). That is, the ability to retrieve phonological information from Chinese characters that have been historically viewed as meaning-based rather than speech-based develops at a slower pace than in alphabetic languages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the simple view of reading (SVR, Hoover and Gough, 1990 ), reading comprehension is the product of word decoding and listening comprehension, which emphasizes the role of speech decoding of written words and oral comprehension in word recognition and higher-level cognitive processing. The model has been extensively verified in research on languages differing in orthographic depth, and both L1 and L2 readers ( Florit and Cain, 2011 ; Janssen et al, 2017 ), including CSL learners ( Wong, 2016 ). Beyond SVR, recent research has highlighted the importance of the quality of word representations for reading skill, including comprehension (lexical quality hypothesis, LQH, Perfetti and Hart, 2001 ; Droop and Verhoeven, 2003 ; Perfetti, 2007 ; Perfetti and Stafura, 2014 ; Verhoeven et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Pinyin Spelling Promotes Reading Abilities of Adolescents Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language: Evidence From Mediation Models

Xiao

Rusamy³

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Pinyin is a phonological encoding system used to spell modern Chinese Mandarin due to the phonological opacity of Chinese characters. The present study examined the role of Pinyin spelling in the reading abilities of adolescents learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). A total of 158 Indonesian senior primary students were tested on Pinyin spelling, character production, listening comprehension, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Pinyin spelling skills were assessed by two measures, Pinyin Dictation (sentence dictation in Pinyin) and Pinyin Tagging (Pinyin writing for characters). Path analysis revealed that even after controlling for the effect of character production, Pinyin dictation performance influenced reading comprehension through the mediating effect of listening comprehension and the depth of vocabulary knowledge, and Pinyin tagging performance also influenced reading comprehension through the mediating effect of the depth of vocabulary knowledge. The results highlight the importance of Pinyin skills for Chinese reading abilities of CFL learners. As a reliable and explicit indicator of specifying Chinese phonological representations and processing, Pinyin spelling has a long-term and multifaceted influence on higher-level CFL abilities.

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“…Orthographic knowledge is commonly considered to benefit word recognition and subsequent reading comprehension across languages (e.g., Burt, 2006 ; Leong et al, 2011 , 2019 ; Wong, 2017 ; Deacon et al, 2019 ; Zarić et al, 2020 ). In alphabetic languages such as English, there are generally two separate but correlated types of orthographic knowledge, one is called “general/sub-lexical orthographic knowledge” (e.g., identifying the letter patterns that violate the orthographic regularities, such as “bbaf”), and the other is called “lexical orthographic knowledge” (e.g., choosing the correct word form between “rain” and “rane”) ( Apel, 2011 ; Conrad et al, 2013 ; Rothe et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taking the character “花 [faa1, flower]” as an example, a learner with rich sub-lexical orthographic knowledge not only notices that the radical “艹” [plant] only appears at the top of a character, but also understand that a character with “艹” may be plant-related in meaning. For CSL learners, it has been well documented that they rely more on sub-lexical orthographic knowledge to recognize characters than their Chinese native counterparts do ( Shen and Ke, 2007 ; Chang et al, 2014 ; Wong, 2017 ; Loh et al, 2018 ; Chan et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical Orthographic Knowledge Mediates the Relationship Between Character Reading and Reading Comprehension Among Learners With Chinese as a Second Language

2022

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Reading in Chinese is complex because readers should not only recognize characters by basic units (i.e., characters) but also integrate characters into words when reading text. While many efforts have been devoted to investigating the effect of sub-lexical orthographic knowledge in Chinese character reading, less is known about the role played by lexical orthographic knowledge at word level. A total of 424 secondary learners with Chinese as a second language (CSL) in Hong Kong were assessed with character reading, reading comprehension, and two lexical orthographic knowledge tasks: lexical orthographic choice (OKC) and lexical orthographic choice in context (OKCC). Path analysis results demonstrated that these lexical orthographic skills significantly mediated the effect of character reading on comprehension, in which OKCC was a more critical mediator as its mediating effect was bigger than that of OKC. Further analyses showed that these mediating effects were significant only among students with richer learning experience (i.e., learning Chinese for 4 years or above). Our results illustrate the possible trajectory of CSL learners’ literacy development from character reading to reading comprehension and provide pedagogical implications for teaching and learning.

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Relationships between reading comprehension and its components in young Chinese-as-a-second-language learners

Cited by 15 publications

References 34 publications

The Relationship Between Orthographic Awareness and Chinese Reading in Hong Kong’s Young CSL Learners

The Relationship Between Orthographic Awareness and Chinese Reading in Hong Kong’s Young CSL Learners

Pinyin Spelling Promotes Reading Abilities of Adolescents Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language: Evidence From Mediation Models

Lexical Orthographic Knowledge Mediates the Relationship Between Character Reading and Reading Comprehension Among Learners With Chinese as a Second Language

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