Text comprehension mediates morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory in predicting Chinese written composition performance.

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about four issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) Whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b) whether they are important predictors of Chinese written composition, and if so, the relative magnitudes and independence of their predictive relations; (c) whether observed predictive relations are mediated by text comprehension; and (d) whether these relations vary or are developmentally invariant across three years of writing development. Based on analyses of the performance of students in grades 4 (n = 246), 5 (n = 242) and 6 (n = 261), the results supported morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory as distinct yet correlated abilities that made independent contributions to predicting Chinese written composition, with working memory as the strongest predictor. However, predictive relations were mediated by text comprehension. The final model accounted for approximately 75 percent of the variance in Chinese written composition. The results were largely developmentally invariant across the three grades from which participants were drawn.

Writing quality predicts Chinese learning

“…Nevertheless, the research on reading and writing association in Chinese is not as systematic and extensive as that in English. Some researchers studied reading-to-writing relationship (Leong, Loh, Ki, & Tse, 2011;Lin et al, 2010;Qu, Damian, Zhang, & Zhu, 2011), whereas others studied writing-to-reading relationship (Chan, Ho, Tsang, Lee, & Chung, 2006;Guan et al, 2011, Guan, Ye, Wagner, & Meng, 2012, Guan, Ye, Meng, & Leong, 2013, Guan, Ye, Wagner, Leong, & Meng, 2014McBride-Chang et al, 2011Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, & Siok, 2005).…”

Orthographic skills important to Chinese literacy development: the role of radical representation and orthographic memory of radicals

“…Semantic radical representation was expected to be particularly important in reading comprehension because it facilitates the semantic representation (i.e., meaning) of the characters, which in turn facilitates text comprehension. Previous studies have found that word spelling is an important predictor of written composition (e.g., Yeung et al 2013bYeung et al , 2015, and that reading comprehension mediates morphological awareness, syntactic processing and working memory in predicting written composition (Guan, Ye, Wagner, Meng, & Leong, 2014). It was hypothesized in the present study that orthographic skills (semantic radical representation, phonetic radical representation and orthographic memory of radicals) would contribute to written composition indirectly through their effects on word spelling and reading comprehension.…”

“…As postulated in Model 1, the preferred model conceptualizing the interrelationships among the variables in the study based on the structural equation modeling results, orthographic skills contributed to written composition indirectly through their effects on word spelling and reading comprehension. In the recent study by Guan et al (2014), morphological awareness, syntactic processing and working memory made unique contributions to Chinese written composition, but their predictive relations were mediated by text comprehension performance. In the present study, other than reading comprehension, we also included word spelling.…”

How does morphosyntactic skill contribute to different genres of Chinese writing from grades 3 to 6?

“…Hoskyn and Swanson () also showed WM scores accounted for a significant amount of variance in writing, and the influence was maintained even when spelling, handwriting speed, digit span, word knowledge and reading comprehension skill were taken into account statistically. Furthermore, Guan et al () also showed that WM was the strongest predictor toward Mandarin‐speaking children's writing skills at Grades 4, 5 and 6.…”