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Abstract
Orthographic knowledge in Chinese was hypothesized to affect elementary Chinese text comprehension (four essays) by 80 twelve-year-old ethnic alphasyllabary language users compared with 74 native Chinese speakers at similar reading level. This was tested with two rapid automatized naming tasks; two working memory tasks; three orthographic knowledge tasks in Chinese; and equivalent tasks in English. Multivariate analyses of covariance showed that the two groups were differentiated on most of the linguistic and cognitive tasks. Confirmatory factor analyses found four factors as hypothesized: text comprehension, verbal working memory, orthographic knowledge in Chinese, and orthographic knowledge in English. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that orthographic knowledge in Chinese explained a considerable amount of individual variation in elementary Chinese text comprehension.
Acknowledgments
The study was assisted in part with a grant from the Hong Kong Education Bureau (HKEDB). We thank HKEDB for its assistance. We also thank Hung Wai Ng, Man Ying Wong, and the principal, teachers, and students of the cooperating school. The views expressed in this article are ours and do not necessarily represent those of HKEDB.