A Comparison of Phonological Awareness, Lexical Compounding, and Homophone Training for Chinese Word Reading in Hong Kong Kindergartners

Abstract

Research Findings: In this study, 88 kindergartners received special training in lexical compounding, homophone awareness, or phonological awareness or were assigned to a control condition over a period of approximately 2 months, with 20-min lessons administered twice per week. Chinese word reading improved significantly more in the lexical compounding group as compared to the other groups. Vocabulary knowledge also showed a trend toward improvement in this group (p < .08) and improved significantly in the homophone group. Although phonological awareness improved most in the phonological awareness training group, this group showed no reading or vocabulary improvements relative to the other groups. Practice or Policy: The results underscore the importance of morphological awareness training for both word reading and vocabulary knowledge in young Chinese children.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (project reference 448907) for supporting this research.

Notes

Note. Sample sizes for age were different from the whole-group sample size because of the inability to obtain birthdays from some of the children. PA = phonological awareness; CA = compound awareness; HA = homophone awareness.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

*p < .05. **p < .01.