Effects of Metalinguistic Awareness on Reading Comprehension and the Mediator Role of Reading Fluency from Grades 2 to 4

Abstract

PurposeThis 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.MethodsFour 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.ResultsMorphological 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.ConclusionsThese 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.

Caracterização do desempenho de escolares do 3º ao 5º ano do ensino fundamental em compreensão de leitura

“…These findings corroborate previous studies 1,6,17,[23][24][25] showing that students from the 4th, 5th and 6th grades also differed in their performances, especially regarding answers to explicit questions, presenting superior performance than the 3rd grade. The students of the 4th grade differed from all, nonetheless, presented superior performance in implicit questions, when compared to the other grades.…”

“…The results indicated that the students´performances were very different from the 3rd to the 5th grades, pointing to a different interaction of the reader with the text, from the beginning of schooling to the later years, a fact also verified by previous studies 11, [21][22][23][24] . Thus, the students from GIII seemed to reach higher levels in that process in relation to GII and this one, in relation to GI.…”

The Longitudinal Contribution of Early Morphological Awareness Skills to Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Greek

“… 2 We did not consider the studies conducted in Chinese here (e.g., McBride-Chang et al, 2005 ; Li and Wu, 2015 ; Cheng et al, 2016 ; Su et al, 2017 ), because compounding awareness in Chinese is different from compounding awareness in alphabetic orthographies ( Ruan et al, 2017 ). …”

Compreensão de leitura e vocabulário receptivo em escolares típicos do ensino fundamental I

“…These findings were surprising, firstly because of the great familiarity that students have with assessments through explicit questions and answers -a method widely used by teachers and often found in textbooks; secondly, due to the fact that explicit questions are easier to answer because they do not require highly complex skills, considering that the answers are practically described in the text, demanding greater memory activation than in processes of textual reading comprehension (28,29) .…”