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Character reading and word reading in Chinese: Unique correlates for Chinese kindergarteners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2015

YING WANG  and
CATHERINE MCBRIDE
YING WANG
Affiliation:
Chinese University of Hong Kong
CATHERINE MCBRIDE*
Affiliation:
Chinese University of Hong Kong
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Catherine McBride, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, People's Republic of China. E-mail: cmcbride@psy.cuhk.edu.hk
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Abstract

We considered the extent to which learning to read Chinese characters and Chinese words (operationally defined as composed of two or more characters) are different in the present study. Study 1 compared reading of the same characters in isolation and those in the context of known words for 63 Chinese third-year kindergarteners. Results showed that children performed significantly better on reading the same characters when embedded within words than when alone. Study 2 further examined the correlates of single-character reading and two-character word reading for 142 Chinese third-year kindergarteners. Despite a high correlation between character reading and word reading, unique correlates emerged. Orthographic awareness, rapid automatized naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge independently explained variance in both character and word reading; however, orthographic awareness explained unique variance in character reading even after statistically controlling for word reading. Whereas orthographic and Pinyin knowledge may be more strongly associated with character recognition, other skills may be more important for learning to read words. Character and word reading may constitute slightly different processes, with somewhat different educational implications for each.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 371 - 386
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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