Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T03:53:50.992Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Phonological Awareness, Orthography, and Learning to Read Chinese

from Part One - Writing System/Neuro-cognitive Processing of Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2022

Chu-Ren Huang
Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yen-Hwei Lin
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
I-Hsuan Chen
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Yu-Yin Hsu
Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Get access

Summary

Phonological awareness refers to a speaker’s knowledge of the phonological structure of the language. The study of phonological awareness has traditionally been associated with the study of reading. As reading Chinese involves an orthography that does not directly encode phonology, the issue of phonological awareness in Chinese speakers and learners has been an intriguing issue. In this chapter, we examine this issue by synthesizing research from reading, orthography, phonology, and, most crucially, from recent studies in Chinese linguistics. In the process, we identify several strong arguments for phonological awareness for Mandarin speakers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Marilyn Jager. 1994. Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bertelson, Paul, Chen, Hsuan-Chih, and de Gelder, Béatrice. 1997. Explicit speech analysis and orthographic experience in Chinese readers. In Cognitive processing of Chinese and related Asian languages, ed. Chen, Hsuan-Chih, 2746. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Bertelson, Paul, Chen, Hsuan-Chih, Tseng, Chin-Hsing, Tseng, Chin-Hsing, Ko, Hwa-Wei, and de Gelder, Béatrice. 1999. Phonological awareness and orthographic experience in Chinese readers. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series 13:2639.Google Scholar
Bradley, Lynette, and Bryant, Peter E.. 1983. Categorizing sounds and learning to read: A causal connection. Nature 30:419421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castles, Anne, and Coltheart, Max. 2004. Is there a causal link from phonological awareness to success in learning to read? Cognition 91(1):77111.Google Scholar
Chall, Jeanne Sternlicht. 1983. Stages of reading development. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren. 1968. A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Susie S. 1981. A study of Taiwanese adjectives. Taipei: Student Book.Google Scholar
Cheung, Him, Chen, Hsuan-Chih, Lai, Chun Yip, Wong, On Chi, and Hills, Melanie. 2001. The development of phonological awareness: Effects of spoken language experience and orthography. Cognition 81(3):227241. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010–0277(01)00136-6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chou, Ya-Min, and Huang, Chu-Ren. 2010. Hantology: Conceptual system discovery based on orthographic convention. In Ontology and the lexicon: A natural language processing perspective, ed. Huang, Chu-Ren, Calzolari, Nicoletta, Gangemi, Aldo, Lenci, Alessandro, Oltramari, Alessandro, and Prevot, Laurent, 122143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ding, Hongwei, Zhang, Yuanyuan, Liu, Hongchao, and Huang, Chu-Ren. 2017. A preliminary phonetic investigation of alphabetic words in Mandarin Chinese. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017, Stockholm, 3028–3032.Google Scholar
Dong, Sicong, and Huang, Chu-Ren 董思聰, 黃居仁. 2020. A comparative study on haplology of Putonghua and Taiwan Mandarin and its standardisation 兩岸同音刪略現象對比研究. Chinese Linguistics 漢語學報 69(1):1424.Google Scholar
Dong, Sicong, and Wong, Sam Yin. 2020. Haplology and lexical entries: A study based on cross-linguistic data from Sinitic languages. Lexicography 7(1):5977.Google Scholar
Duanmu, San. 2007. The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Duanmu, San. 2022. Evidence for stress and metrical structure in Chinese. In The Cambridge handbook of Chinese linguistics, ed. Huang, Chu-Ren, Lin, Yen-Hwei, Chen, I-Hsuan, and Hsu, Yu-Yin, 361382. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ho, Connie Suk-Han, and Bryant, Peter. 1997. Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese. Developmental Psychology 33:946951.Google Scholar
Ho, Connie Suk-Han, Wai-Ock Chan, David, Lee, Suk-Han, Tsang, Suk-Man, and Hui Luan, Vivian. 2004. Cognitive profiling and preliminary subtyping in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Cognition 91:4375. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010–0277(03)00163-X.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ho, Connie Suk-Han, Chan, David W., Tsang, Suk-Man, Lee, Suk-Han, and Chung, Kevin K. H.. 2006: Word learning deficit among Chinese dyslexic children. Journal of Child Language 33:145161.Google ScholarPubMed
Hoover, Wesley A., and Gough, Philip B.. 1990. The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2:127160.Google Scholar
Hsieh, Feng-fan, and Kenstowicz, Michael J.. 2008. Phonetic knowledge in tonal adaptation: Mandarin and English loanwords in Lhasa Tibetan. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17(4):279297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren. 1992. Adjectival reduplication in Southern Min: A study of morpholexical rules with syntactic effects. Chinese Language and Linguistics 1:407422.Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren. 2009. Semantics as an orthography-relevant level for Mandarin Chinese. Paper presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics, July 2–4, Paris.Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, Chen, Chao-Ran, and Shen, Claude C. C.. 2002. The nature of categorical ambiguity and its implications for language processing: A corpus-based study of Mandarin Chinese. In Sentence processing in East Asian languages, ed. Nakamura, Mineharu, 5383. Stanford, CA: CLSI Press.Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, and Chou, Ya-Min. 2015. Multilingual conceptual access to lexicon based on shared orthography: An ontology-driven study of Chinese and Japanese. In Language production, cognition, and the lexicon, ed. Gala, Núria, Rapp, Reinhard, and Bel-Enguix, Gemma, 135150. Cham: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, and Hsieh, Shu-Kai. 2015. Chinese lexical semantics: From radicals to event structure. In The Oxford handbook of Chinese linguistics, ed. Wang, William S.-Y. and Sun, Chao-Fen, 290305. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, and Liu, Hongchao 黃居仁, 劉洪超. 2017. Corpus-based automatic extraction and analysis of Mandarin Alphabetic Words 基于語料庫的漢語字母詞自動抽取與分析. Journal of Yunnan Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 云南師范大學學報(哲學社會科學版) 49(3):1021.Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, Yang, Ya-Jun, and Chen, Sheng-Yi. 2013. Radicals as ontologies: Concept derivation and knowledge representation of four-hoofed mammals as semantic symbols. Breaking down the barriers: Interdisciplinary studies in Chinese linguistics and beyond 2, 11171133. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Huang, Hsiu-Shuang, and Hanley, J. Richard. 1995. Phonological awareness and visual skills in learning to read Chinese and English. Cognition 54:7398. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010–0277(94)00641-W.Google Scholar
Huang, Hsiu-Shuang, and Hanley, J. Richard. 1997. A longitudinal study of phonological awareness, visual skills, and Chinese reading acquisition among first-graders in Taiwan. International Journal of Behavioral Development 20:249268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael, and Suchato, Atiwong. 2006. Issues in loanword adaptation: A case study from Thai. Lingua 116(7):921949. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.006.Google Scholar
LaCharité, Darlene, and Paradis, Carole. 2005. Category preservation and proximity versus phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation. Linguistic Inquiry 36(2):223258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landerl, Karin, and Wimmer, Heinz. 2000. Deficits in phoneme segmentation are not the core problem of dyslexia: Evidence from German and English children. Applied Psycholinguistics 21(2):243262. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716400002058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landerl, Karin, Wimmer, Heinz, and Frith, Uta. 1997. The impact of orthographic consistency on dyslexia: A German–English comparison. Cognition 63:315334. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010–0277(97)00005-X.Google Scholar
Liberman, Isabelle Y., Donald Shankweiler, F. William Fischer, and Carter, Bonnie. 1974. Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18:201212.Google Scholar
Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2008. Variable vowel adaptation in Standard Mandarin loanwords. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17(4):363380.Google Scholar
Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2022. The morphophonology of Chinese affixation. In The Cambridge handbook of Chinese linguistics, ed. Huang, Chu-Ren, Lin, Yen-Hwei, Chen, I-Hsuan, and Hsu, Yu-Yin, 223244. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Youran, Lin, You-Jing, Wang, Feng, Wu, Xiyu, and Kong, Jiangping. 2020. The development of phonological awareness and Pinyin knowledge in Mandarin-speaking school-aged children. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 22(6):660668. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1819417.Google Scholar
Lonigan, Christopher J., Burgess, Stephen R., Anthony, Jason L., and Barker, Theodore A.. 1998. Development of phonological sensitivity in 2- to 5-year-old children. Journal of Educational Psychology 90(2):294311.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang, Catherine, Bialystok, Ellen, Chong, Karen K. Y., and Li, Yanping. 2004. Levels of phonological awareness in three cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 89:93111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2004.05.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McBride-Chang, Catherine, Cho, Jeung-Ryeul, Liu, Hongyun, Wagner, Richard K., Shu, Hua, Zhou, Aibao, Cheuk, Cecilia S-M., and Muse, Andrea. 2005. Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 92(2):140160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.03.009.Google Scholar
Mann, Virginia A. 1986. Phonological awareness: The role of reading experience. Cognition 24(1–2):6592. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(86)90005-3.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Ignatius G. 1972. Reading, the linguistic process, and linguistic awareness. In Language by ear and by eye: The relationship between speech and reading, ed. Kavanagh, James F. and Mattingly, Ignatius G., 133147. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Melby-Lervåg, Monica, Lyster, Solveig-Alma Halaas, and Hulme, Charles. 2012. Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin 138(2):322352.Google Scholar
Morais, José, Bertelson, Paul, Cary, Luz, and Alegria, Jesus. 1986. Literacy training and speech segmentation. Cognition 24:4564. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010–0277(86)90004-1.Google Scholar
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). 2000. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for Reading Instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.Google Scholar
Neergaard, Karl and Chu-Ren, Huang. 2022. Mandarin Chinese syllable structure and phonological similarity: perception and production studies. In The Cambridge handbook of Chinese linguistics, ed. Huang, Chu-Ren, Lin, Yen-Hwei, Chen, I-Hsuan, and Hsu, Yu-Yin, 245274. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Neergaard, Karl David, Luo, Jin, and Huang, Chu-Ren. 2019. Phonological network fluency identifies phonological restructuring through mental search. Scientific Reports 9:15984. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-52433-w.Google Scholar
Newman, Ellen Hamilton, Tardif, Twila, Huang, Jingyuan, and Shu, Hua. 2011. Phonemes matter: The role of phoneme-level awareness in emergent Chinese readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 108:242259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2010.09.001.Google Scholar
Paulesu, Eraldo, Demonet, Jean-François, Fazio, Ferruccio, McCrory, Eamon, Chanoine, Valerie, Brunswick, Nicky, Cappa, Stefano F., Cossu, Giuseppe, Habib, Michel, Frith, Chris D., and Frith, Uta. 2001. Dyslexia: Cultural diversity and biological unity. Science 291:21652167. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1057179.Google Scholar
Read, Charles, Yun-Fei, Zhang, Hong-Yin, Nie, and Bao-Qing, Ding. 1986. The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing. Cognition 24(1–2):3144. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(86)90003-X.Google Scholar
Ruan, Yufang, Georgiou, George K, Song, Shuang, Li, Yixun, and Shu, Hua. 2018. Does writing system influence the associations between phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology 110(2):180202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shu, Hua, Anderson, Richard C., and Wu, Ningning. 2000. Phonetic awareness: Knowledge of orthography–phonology relationships in the character acquisition of Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology 92(1):5662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shu, Hua, Chen, Xi, Anderson, Richard C., Wu, Ningning, and Xuan, Yue. 2003. Properties of school Chinese implications for learning to read. Child Development 74(1):2747. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00519.Google Scholar
Shu, Hua, McBride-Chang, Catherine, Wu, Sina, and Liu, Hongyun. 2006. Understanding Chinese developmental dyslexia: Morphological awareness as a core cognitive construct. Journal of Educational Psychology 98:122133.Google Scholar
Shu, Hua, Peng, Hong, and McBride-Chang, Catherine. 2008. Phonological awareness in young Chinese children. Developmental Science 11(1):171181. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00654.x.Google Scholar
Siok, Wai Ting, and Fletcher, Paul. 2001. The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition. Developmental Psychology 37(6):886899.Google Scholar
Snow, Catherine E., Burns, M. Susan, and Griffin, Peg. (eds.) 1998. Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy PressGoogle Scholar
Song, Shuang, Georgiou, George K., Su, Mengmeng, and Hua, Shu. 2016. How well do phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming correlate with Chinese reading accuracy and fluency? A meta-analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading 20:99123. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2015.1088543.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard. 2000. A computational theory of writing systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swanson, H. Lee, Trainin, Guy, Necoechea, Denise M., and Hammill, Donal D.. 2003. Rapid naming, phonological awareness, and reading: A meta-analysis of the correlation evidence. Review of Educational Research 73(4):407440. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543073004407.Google Scholar
Taylor, Insup. 2002. Phonological awareness in Chinese reading. In Chinese children’s reading acquisition, ed. Li, Wenling, Gaffney, Janet S., and Packard, Jerome L.. Boston, MA: Kluwer AcademicGoogle Scholar
Tzeng, Shih-Jay, and Chen, Shu-li. 曾世杰, 陳淑麗. 2007. The effectiveness of a Chu-Yin-Fu-Hao remedial program to first-grade low achievers 注音補救教學對一年級低成就兒童的教學成效實驗研究. Journal of Education and Psychology 教育與心理研究 30(3):5377.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard K. 1988. Causal relations between the development of phonological processing abilities and the acquisition of reading skills: A meta-analysis. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 32:261279.Google Scholar
Wang, Li-Chih. 2017. Effects of phonological training on the reading and reading-related abilities of Hong Kong children with dyslexia. Frontiers in Psychology, 8:113.Google Scholar
Wang, William S.-Y. 1973. The Chinese language. Scientific American 228:5060. www.jstor.org/stable/24922980.Google Scholar
Wang, Ying, and McBride, Catherine. 2016. Character reading and word reading in Chinese: Unique correlates for Chinese kindergarteners. Applied Psycholinguistics 37(2):371386.Google Scholar
Wei, Tong-Qi, Bi, Hong-Yan, Chen, Bao-Guo, Liu, Ying, Weng, Xu-Chu, and Wydell, Taeko N.. 2014. Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade. PLoS ONE 9:e96240. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wong, Sam Yin, Chen, I-Hsuan, and Huang, Chu-Ren. 2018. Facilitating and blocking conditions of haplology: A comparative study of Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin. In Proceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
Xiang, Rong, Wan, Mingyu, Su, Qi, Huang, Chu-Ren, and Lu, Qin. 2020. Sina Mandarin Alphabetical Words: A Web-driven code-mixing lexical resource. Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 10th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing, 833–842. www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.aacl-main.84.pdf.Google Scholar
Yip, Moira Jean. 1980. The tonal phonology of Chinese. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Zhou, Yan-Ling, McBride-Chang, Catherine, Fong, Cathy Y.-C., Wong, Terry T.-Y., and Cheung, Sum Kwing. 2012. A comparison of phonological awareness, lexical compounding, and homophone training for Chinese word reading in Hong Kong kindergartners. Early Education and Development 23:475492.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×