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

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) designates that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and listening comprehension and this conclusion has been supported by studies on school-aged native and nonnative speakers. However, it remains unknown whether SVR can be applied to adult second language (L2) learners. The current study addressed this issue by testing adult learners of Chinese as a second language with various proficiency levels and further extended the model by including word segmentation and word-meaning access, both of which are particularly crucial in reading Chinese. The results showed that listening comprehension only contributed to reading comprehension for the advanced learners, while decoding accuracy predicted reading comprehension regardless of Chinese proficiency. However, the total proportion of variance accounted for was relatively low, especially for the lower proficiency groups. Interestingly, word segmentation and word-meaning access explained a large proportion of the total variance and concomitantly decreased the apparent influence of word decoding. Taken together, these findings highlight that the individual characteristics of a given language can modulate the contributions of decoding and listening comprehension to predicting reading comprehension.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Extended Simple View of Reading in Adult Learners of Chinese as a Second Language

Hao

Fang²,

Sun³

et al. 2022

“…Therefore, the present study aimed at examining of the role of syntactic awareness in L2 Chinese reading. Previous studies in L2 Chinese reading (e.g., Zhou, 2018Zhou, , 2021 indicated that character knowledge, vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension. The present study included linguistics skills such as character recognition, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness to control for their effects over L2 Chinese reading comprehension.…”

Section: The Purpose Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 93%

The Effects of Syntactic Awareness to L2 Chinese Passage-Level Reading Comprehension

Zhou

2022

Self Cite

This study investigated the association between syntactic awareness and L2 Chinese passage-level reading comprehension among 209 Chinese as a second language adult-learners. The participants were administered a character knowledge test, a vocabulary knowledge test, a morphological awareness test, a grammatical judgment and correction test, a word order test, and two reading comprehension tests (multiple-choice questions and cloze test). Partial correlation analyses showed that the participants’ performance in two syntactic awareness tasks were significantly positively correlated with their passage-level reading comprehension. Multiple regression analyses revealed that syntactic awareness made a unique contribution to L2 Chinese reading even when the effects of age, major, gender, length of learning Chinese, character knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness were controlled for. In addition, the word order knowledge had a stronger predicting power to L2 Chinese reading comprehension compared to the grammatical judgment/correction ability.

“…Vocabulary knowledge plays a significant role in learning Chinese as a second language (CSL) and is considered an essential indicator of second language (L2) learning capability (Nation, 2011;Webb and Sasao, 2013;Matthews, 2018;Zhou, 2021). Self-regulation is a dynamic concept that represents individuals' involvement in learning, including cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational aspects that encourage learners to actively modify their personal learning goals in response to external changes to achieve desirable outcomes (Zimmerman and Risemberg, 1997;Dörnyei, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocabulary Learning in Chinese as a Second Language: Exploring the Role of Self-Regulation in Facilitating Vocabulary Knowledge of Second Language Learners

Zhu

2022

Vocabulary knowledge comprises depth and breadth, which are regarded as important indicators of second language (L2) learning capability. Self-regulation is a key factor in promoting vocabulary knowledge. However, the role and contribution of depth and breadth in and to L2 learning, as well as the predictive role of different factors of self-regulation in depth and breadth, remain unclear. Therefore, this study aims to identify the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and self-regulation by establishing a structural equation model based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using self-regulation and vocabulary knowledge (depth and breadth) questionnaires. A total of 215 Vietnamese university students participated in the research. The results show that Vietnamese university students generally obtain high scores in breadth, but their scores vary in depth, which indicates although most of them can accurately understand some aspects of Chinese word meaning, they are not able to command the form and usage of words. In addition, there is a negative correlation between self-regulation and vocabulary breadth, which demonstrates that high self-regulation, especially emotional control, can affect Vietnamese university students’ vocabulary learning. This study also proposes some suggestions for Chinese vocabulary teaching.