Longitudinal predictors of Chinese word reading and spelling among elementary grade students

Abstract

The longitudinal predictive power of four important reading-related skills (phonological skills, rapid naming, orthographic skills, and morphological awareness) to Chinese word reading and writing to dictation (i.e., spelling) was examined in a 3-year longitudinal study among 251 Chinese elementary students. Rapid naming, orthographic skills, and morphological awareness assessed in Grade 1 were significant longitudinal predictors of Chinese word reading in Grades 1 to 4. As for word spelling, rapid naming was the only significant predictor across grades. Morphological awareness was a robust predictor of word spelling in Grade 1 only. Phonological skills and orthographic skills significantly predicted word spelling in Grades 2 and 4. After controlling for autoregressive effects, morphological awareness and orthographic skills were the significant longitudinal predictors of Chinese word reading and word spelling, respectively. These findings reflected the impacts of the Chinese orthography on children's reading and spelling development.Research in the past decade has suggested that phonological skills, rapid naming, orthographic skills, and morphological awareness are important reading-related skills for learning to read and write

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

“…In a study by Leong et al (2011) among third graders in Hong Kong, orthographic skills at the radical level were found to predict Chinese reading comprehension after controlling for the contribution of rapid naming and working memory. Similar findings were found in the studies by Yeung et al (2011Yeung et al ( , 2013d. Knowledge of the habitual position and function of semantic radicals was found to be a significant predictor of concurrent word reading, and sentence comprehension (Yeung et al, 2011) and longitudinal measures of word reading and word spelling (Yeung et al, 2013d) in the context of cognitive linguistic skills including phonological awareness, rapid naming and morphological awareness.…”

“…Similar findings were found in the studies by Yeung et al (2011Yeung et al ( , 2013d. Knowledge of the habitual position and function of semantic radicals was found to be a significant predictor of concurrent word reading, and sentence comprehension (Yeung et al, 2011) and longitudinal measures of word reading and word spelling (Yeung et al, 2013d) in the context of cognitive linguistic skills including phonological awareness, rapid naming and morphological awareness. However, there were at least two limitations in the studies by Cheung et al (2007), Leong et al (2011) andTong et al (2009).…”

“…Findings regarding the relationships between cognitive-linguistic skills and reading comprehension and written composition in Grade 4 were published in two papers (Yeung, Ho, Chan, Chung & Wong 2013a;Yeung, Ho, Chan & Chung 2013b). Findings reported in the study by Yeung et al 2013d showed that orthographic knowledge of children in Grade 1 did not have a strong direct effect on subsequent reading. Children learning to read in Chinese may take years to develop their orthographic knowledge in view of the complexity of the Chinese writing system.…”

“…Recent studies (Cheung,Chan, & Chong, 2007;Leong, Tse, Loh, & Ki, 2011;Tong et al, 2009;Yeung et al, 2011Yeung et al, , 2013d have shown that orthographic skills are important predictors of Chinese literacy skills in the context of other cognitivelinguistic skills. In a study by Leong et al (2011) among third graders in Hong Kong, orthographic skills at the radical level were found to predict Chinese reading comprehension after controlling for the contribution of rapid naming and working memory.…”

“…Given the fact that Chinese has an opaque and complex orthography, studies have shown that orthographic learning and representation are particularly important in Chinese reading and spelling development (e.g., Tong, McBride-Chang, Shu, & Wong, 2009;Yeung et al, 2011Yeung et al, , 2013d. Most previous studies have focused on the relationships between orthographic skills and word level literacy in Chinese, and comparatively fewer research efforts have been made to explore the relationship between orthographic representation and text level literacy.…”