Learning to Read Chinese: The Roles of Phonological Awareness and Morphological Awareness

Abstract

The results of Study 1 demonstrate that second graders were better than first graders on all measures except for the syllable-categorization task, in which the two grades did not differ. Similarly, except for the syllable-categorization task, in which the three reading levels did not differ, all the measures distinguished the performance of good readers from poor readers. Morphological awareness had a greater influence on children's reading performance than did phonological awareness. The results of Study 2 show that the PA instruction group performed the best on the phonological awareness posttest of the four groups, and the MA instruction group outperformed the other groups on the character recognition posttest. Unfortunately, no significant differences on students' morphological awareness posttest were found among the four groups, and the performance of students on the reading posttest was not greatly attributed to the intervention in phonological or morphological awareness.