Chinese and English reading-related skills in L1 and L2 Chinese-speaking children in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Both Chinese and English literacy-related measures and cognitive-linguistic behavioural tasks were tested in second and third graders who were L1 (N = 29) and L2 Chinese speakers (N = 34), in order to answer the following question: How do these two groups differ in language and cognitive correlates of particular Chinese literacy skills? While the L1 group’s scores showed relatively substantial correlations of a range of variables with Chinese word-reading and writing skills, for the L2 group the only correlation was between phonological awareness and literacy skills in both Chinese and English. Phonological awareness skills can be important for learning English as a second language, especially for early decoding and spelling, but a wider range of skills, including morphological awareness skills, visual skills, and orthographic skills, may be necessary for learning Chinese.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese as L2
• Hong Kong ethnic minority
• morphological awareness
• orthographic processing
• phonological awareness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Public Policy Research Funding Scheme from the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. [grant number 2013.A4.001.13A].