Abstract
This study investigated universal and language-specific phonological awareness in reading development among Chinese early adolescent students. Seventy-six children participated in this study and completed a series of reading tasks at two data collection points across Grades 5 and 6. In Grade 5, universal phonological awareness (syllable, onset, rhyme, and phoneme awareness), language-specific phonological awareness (tone awareness) as well as character recognition and production measurements were administered to the participants. Lexical inferencing ability was measured in Grade 6. Character recognition and lexical inference were coded as the outcome variables. Subsequent multiple regression analyses showed that Time 1 (Grade 5) language-universal onset and phoneme awareness predicted character recognition and production at Time 1. More strikingly, the study demonstrated that language-specific tone awareness exerted a longitudinal effect on later lexical inferencing ability after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. Results underscored both the universality and language specificity of phonological awareness and provided empirical evidence to substantiate the facilitative role of early language-specific psycholinguistic grain size in later reading performance.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee at the authors’ institution and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Disclosure statement
The author certifies that he has no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
Notes
1 Chinese students develop pinyin knowledge to decode words in the first grade.