title: Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade.
abstract: The present study investigated the relationship between Chinese reading skills and metalinguistic awareness skills such as phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness for 101 Preschool, 94 Grade-1, 98 Grade-2, and 98 Grade-3 children from two primary schools in Mainland China. The aim of the study was to examine how each of these metalinguistic awareness skills would exert their influence on the success of reading in Chinese with age. The results showed that all three metalinguistic awareness skills significantly predicted reading success. It further revealed that orthographic awareness played a dominant role in the early stages of reading acquisition, and its influence decreased with age, while the opposite was true for the contribution of morphological awareness. The results were in stark contrast with studies in English, where phonological awareness is typically shown as the single most potent metalinguistic awareness factor in literacy acquisition. In order to account for the current data, a three-stage model of reading acquisition in Chinese is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Tong-Qi
authors.initials: TQ
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hong-Yan
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Bi
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Bao-Guo
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: School of Health Care Management and Education, China Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Hangzhou Normal University, Central of Cognition & Brain Disorders, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
authors.forename: Xu-Chu
authors.initials: XC
authors.lastname: Weng
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University, Middlesex, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Taeko N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Wydell
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011932:Reading; D014825:Vocabulary