Abstract
This study investigated the nature of morphological awareness and its relation to learning to read Chinese characters among 46 Chinese-speaking preschool children. The children took a morphological awareness task, which varied in semantic transparency and morpheme position. Children’s vocabulary knowledge and extant character reading ability were measured. Additionally, a character learning task was administered. Results showed that children’s performances on morphological awareness were affected by semantic transparency but not by morpheme position. Morphological awareness was related to vocabulary knowledge when partialling out character reading ability but not to character reading ability after partialling out vocabulary knowledge. The results of the character learning task further revealed that morphological awareness was related to character identification in the words that were just taught but not to character identification in the words that were not taught or in pseudowords. The relation between morphological awareness and character identification ceased to be significant when partialling out the variance in children’s prior knowledge of the characters to be learnt. Taken together, the findings suggested that vocabulary knowledge may play a more important role than reading ability in the initial development of morphological awareness and that the facilitative effect of morphological knowledge in reading does not seem to be significant in the very initial stages of reading acquisition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Learning and thinking about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Bowey J., Patel R. K. (1988). Metalinguistic ability and early reading achievement. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9: 367–383
Carlisle J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 169–190
Carlisle J. F. (2003). Morphology matters in learning to read: A commentary. Reading Psychology 24: 291–322
Casalis S., Louis-Alexandre M. F. (2000). Morphological analysis, phonological analysis, and learning to read French: A longitudinal study. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 303–335
Champion A. (1997). Knowledge of suffixed words: A comparison of reading disabled and nondisabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia 47: 29–55
Chao Y. R. (1976). Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics: Essays. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Deacon S. H., Kirby J. R. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just “more phonological”? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics 25: 223–238
Dominiek S. (1990). On the representation and processing of compound words: Automatic access to component morphemes does not occur. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 42: 529–567
Dunn L. M., Dunn L. M. (1981). Peabody picture vocabulary test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service
Elbro C., Arnbak E. (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia. Annuals of Dyslexia 46: 209–240
Fu C.-L., Huang H.-S. (2000). The effects of metalinguistic awareness training of the low-achievers at elementary schools. Chinese Journal of Psychology 42: 87–100
Goswami U., Bryant P. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. London: Lawrence Erlbaum
Ho C. S.-H., Bryant P. (1997). Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese. Developmental Psychology 33: 946–951
Hsu J. H. (1987). A study of the stages of development and acquisition of Mandarin Chinese by children in Taiwan. Taipei, Taiwan: Crane
Hu C. F., Catts H. W. (1998). The role of phonological processing in early reading ability: What we can learn from Chinese. Scientific Studies of Reading 2: 55–79
Huang H.-S. (2004). Graded Chinese character recognition test. Taiwan, Taipei: Psychological Publishing Co., Ltd
Ku Y.-M., Anderson R. C. (2003). Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and English. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 16: 399–422
Leong C. K. (2000). Rapid processing of base and derived forms of words and grade 4, 5, 6 children’s spelling. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 277–302
Li W., Anderson R. C., Nagy W. E., Zhang H. (2002). Facets of metalinguistic awareness that contribute to Chinese literacy. In: W. Li, J. S. Gaffney, J. L. Packard (Eds.) Chinese children’s reading acquisition: Theoretical and pedagogical issues. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 87–111
Lu L., Liu M.-X. (1998). Peabody picture vocabulary test – revised. Taiwan, Taipei: Psychological Publishing Co., Ltd
Lyster S. A. H. (2002). The effects of morphological awareness versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15: 261–294
Mahony D. L. (1994). Using sensitivity to word structure to explain variance in high school and college level reading ability. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6: 19–44
Mahony D. L., Singson M., Mann V. (2000). Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological relation. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 191–218
McBride-Chang C., Shu H., Zhou A., Wat C. P., Wagner R. K. (2003). Morphological awareness uniquely predicts young children’s Chinese character recognition. Journal of Educational Psychology 95: 743–751
McBride-Chang C., Wagner R. K., Muse A., Chow B. W.-Y., Shu H. (2005). The role of morphological awareness in children’s vocabulary acquisition in English. Applied Psycholinguistics 26: 415–435
Nagy W. E., Kuo-Kealoha A., Wu X., Li W., Anderson R. C., Chen X. (2002). The role of morphological awareness in learning to read Chinese. In: W. Li, J. S. Gaffney, J. L. Packard (Eds.) Chinese children’s reading acquisition: Theoretical and pedagogical issues. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 59–86
Nakamura M., Plante E., Swisher L. (1990). Predictors of novel inflection learning in preschool-aged boys. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 33: 747–754
Nunes T., Bryant P., Olsson J. (2003). Learning morphological and phonological spelling rules: An intervention study. Scientific Studies of Reading 7: 289–307
Pinker S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Pong D.-L., Shu H., Chen H.-Z. (1997). Hanyu renzhi yanjiu de lishi he fangfa [The history and research methods in Chinese and cognition]. In: D.-L. Pong (Ed.) Hanyu renzi yanjiu [Research on Chinese and cognition]. Jinan, China: Shandong Education Press, pp. 3–34
Schreuder R., Baayen R. H. (1995). Modeling morphological processing In: L. B. Feldman (Ed.) Morphological aspects of language processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 131–154
Senechal M. (2000). Morphological effects in children’s spelling of French words. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 54: 76–85
Silvestri S., Silvestri R. (1977). A developmental analysis of the acquisition of compound words. Language, Speech, and Hearing Service in the Schools 8: 217–221
Singson M., Mahony D., Mann V. (2000). The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 219–252
Tyler A., Nagy W. (1989). The acquisition of English derivational morphology. Journal of Memory and Language 28: 649–667
Wang C., Peng D., Guan L., Kuang P. (1999). The role of surface frequencies, cumulative morpheme frequencies, and semantic transparencies in the processing of compound words. Acta Psychologica Sinica 31: 257–265
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by research grants from National Science Council, Taiwan, to the second author (NSC92-2411-H133-002; NSC93-2411-H133-001).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chung, WL., Hu, CF. Morphological awareness and learning to read Chinese. Read Writ 20, 441–461 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-006-9037-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-006-9037-7