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Two groups of 13 to14-year-old alphasyllabary language users (mainly Hindi and Urdu), in integrated or designated school settings (respectively 40 and 48 students), were compared with 59 Chinese students in comprehending 4 elementary Chinese texts, each with three inferential questions requiring short open-ended written answers. Three constructs each with two indicators were hypothesized to predict text comprehension differentially in the three groups: verbal working memory, orthographic processing and sentence processing. The 147 students also completed a short questionnaire on their reading and writing of Chinese, a 43-item Students' Approaches to Learning and a nonverbal general intelligence test. Multivariate analyses of variance and hierarchical multiple regression analyses point to the significant contribution of verbal span working memory, orthographic choice in context and sentence processing in Chinese to Chinese text comprehension. Educational implications include strengthening teaching the structure and function of Chinese characters and words to enhance text comprehension.

Background: While much is known about how morphological awareness (MA) contributes to reading development, little attention has been paid to how reading may conversely affect MA development, particularly in readers of Chinese in a bilingual/multilingual setting. Methods: The study adopted a cross-lagged panel design. Young bilingual readers of Chinese were measured in MA, word reading and reading comprehension -- all in Chinese -- twice from Grade 3 to Grade 4. Results: Path analysis revealed that Grade 3 MA significantly predicted Grade 4 reading comprehension after controlling for the autoregressive effect. Over and above Grade 3 MA, Grade 3 reading also significantly predicted Grade 4 MA. Subsequent analyses, however, revealed disparate developmental patterns between those with Chinese and English, respectively, as their home language. Implications: These findings, while supporting reciprocity of developmental relationships between MA and reading, also suggested that the pattern of relationships can vary as a function of students' target language experiences in a bilingual/multilingual setting.

This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic choice and orthographic choice in context), syntactic processing (grammaticality and sentence integrity), and verbal working memory (two reading span indicators) to written Chinese composition (narration, explanation, and argumentation) in 129 15-year-old L2 learners. A matrix task was also administered as a control task to tap cognitive flexibility. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with written composition as a latent variable revealed orthographic processing and working memory as two significant, independent contributors, whereas the unique contribution of syntactic processing was not significant. Subsequent SEM analysis with narration, explanation, and argumentation as separate endogenous variables found varied patterns of the contribution of each latent predictor to written composition in different genres. These patterns are discussed in light of the importance of attention to learners' developmental stage and genre-sensitive measures to capture the psycholinguistic and cognitive underpinnings of written composition in L2 Chinese.

The present study aimed at developing young children's knowledge of the structure and function of orthographic components of Chinese characters and words. Grade 2, eight-year-old Chinese children (N = 541) were taught a twelve-week training programme in two quasi experimental conditions: analytic and synthetic approach (ASA), and integrated analytic and synthetic approach (INA). A traditional memorisation and drill approach (TRA) was the control condition. MANOVAs and hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed the INA was more effective as compared with the ASA and the TRA in the post-training character writing performance. The groups performed differentially in the eight "bujian" ('radical' components) processing tasks as indicators of their character and word writing performance. A confirmatory factor analysis found these eight indicator tasks subserved well the three latent constructs of Word Form Retrieval, "Bujian" Analysis and Synthesis and "Bujian" Compounding. "Bujian" analysis and synthesis are emphasised in the character-centred approach in learning and teaching Chinese lexical items.

Two groups of 12-year-old ethnic minority (EM) users of alphasyllabary (66 Tibetan and 45 Yi) were compared with 42 Han Chinese students in comprehending Chinese narrative and expository texts, each with inferential questions requiring short open-ended written answers. Three constructs (verbal working memory, orthographic and sentential processing), each with two indicators, were hypothesized to predict text comprehension differentially in the three groups. A 43-item Students' Approaches to Learning (SAL) scale showed the EM students might not have developed effective strategies in learning Chinese. A task x group MANCOVA with SAL as covariate showed substantial differences in the students' performance. Multiple comparisons found group differences changed across tasks. Structural equation modeling, multiple regression analyses point to the significant and differential contribution of the constructs and the tasks to the two genres of Chinese text comprehension in the different groups. Educational implications include strengthening teaching the structure and function of Chinese characters, words, syntax and the need for adaptive curriculum materials.

This longitudinal study examined the contribution of morphological awareness to bilingual word learning of Malay-English bilingual children in Singapore where English is the medium of instruction. Participants took morphological awareness and lexical inference tasks in both English and Malay twice with an interval of about half a year, the first time at the end of Grade 3 (Time 1) and the second time at the end of the first semester of Grade 4 (Time 2). Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses revealed that within both languages, morphological awareness significantly predicted lexical inference at Time 1 as well as Time 2, and the contribution also became strengthened over time. Cross-linguistic SEM analyses showed that concurrently at both Time 1 and Time 2, English morphological awareness only had a significant indirect effect on Malay lexical inference. The exact indirect relationships, however, varied between Time 1 and Time 2. In addition, an indirect effect of Time 1 English morphological awareness on Time 2 Malay lexical inference also surfaced. These findings suggest concurrent as well as longitudinal cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from English to Malay.

The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about 4 issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b) whether they are important predictors of Chinese written composition and, if so, the relative magnitudes and independence of their predictive relations; (c) whether observed predictive relations are mediated by text comprehension; and (d) whether these relations vary or are developmentally invariant across 3 years of writing development. Based on analyses of the performance of students in Grades 4 (n = 246), 5 (n = 242), and 6 (n = 261), the results supported morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory as distinct yet correlated abilities that made independent contributions to predicting Chinese written composition, with working memory as the strongest predictor. However, predictive relations were mediated by text comprehension. The final model accounted for approximately 75% of the variance in Chinese written composition. The results were largely developmentally invariant across the 3 grades from which participants were drawn.

We studied the performance in three genres of Chinese written composition (narration, exposition, and argumentation) of 158 grade 4, 5, and 6 poor Chinese text comprehenders compared with 156 good Chinese text comprehenders. We examined text comprehension and written composition relationship. Verbal working memory (verbal span working memory and operation span working memory) and different levels of linguistic tasks--morphological sensitivity (morphological compounding and morphological chain), sentence processing (syntax construction and syntax integrity), and text comprehension (narrative and expository texts)--were used to predict separately narrative, expository, and argumentation written compositions in these students. Grade for grade, the good text comprehenders outperformed the poor text comprehenders in all tasks, except for morphological chain. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed differential contribution of the tasks to different genres of writing. In particular, text comprehension made unique contribution to argumentation writing in the poor text comprehenders. Future studies ashould ask students to read and write parallel passages in the same genre for better comparison and incorporate both instructional and motivational variables.

The present study examined pedagogic components of Chinese reading literacy in a representative sample of 1164 Grades 7, 9 and 11 Chinese students (mean age of 15 years) from 11 secondary schools in Hong Kong with each student tested for about 2.5 hours. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses showed that across the three grade levels, the eight reading literacy constructs (Essay Writing, Morphological Compounding, Correction of Characters and Words, Segmentation of Text, Text Comprehension, Copying of Characters and Words, Writing to Dictation and Reading Aloud), each subserved by multiple indicators, had differential concurrent prediction of scaled internal school performance in reading and composing. Writing-reading and their interactive effects were foremost in their predictive power, followed by performance in error correction and writing to dictation, morphological compounding, segmenting text and copying with reading aloud playing a negligible role. Our battery of tasks with some refinement could serve as a screening instrument for secondary Chinese students struggling with Chinese reading literacy.

We trained 36 12-year-old Chinese students with reading disorders in the analysis, synthesis and integration of orthographic constituents of semantic and phonetic "bujians" (radicals); and also their writing (spelling and composing) skills. These target students were compared with 37 age-controls in a pre-test and post-test design on a number of reading literacy indicators predicated on the "Blueprint of the Reader". The tasks were: essay writing; morphological compounding; correction of errors; segmentation; text comprehension; fluency; copying of words, and of texts; writing to dictation; and reading aloud words and text. A promax oblique structure analysis of the performance of the 73 students found the tasks clustered into four components. A two (group) x 11 (tasks) multivariate analysis of covariance with the pre-training tasks as covariates followed by analyses of variance showed that the experimental students outperformed their age-peers in essay writing, morphological compounding, correction of errors, text comprehension and reading text aloud. They were also highly satisfied with their training as shown in a questionnaire survey. (Contains 4 tables.)

We investigated the effects of enhancing orthographic knowledge on the spelling of Chinese characters and words in 131 eight-year-old Chinese children at risk for dyslexia. The traditional approach (37 children) emphasizing memory and repeated writing was the control condition. The analytic and synthetic approach (ASA, 33 children) stressed insight into character structure. The integrated analytic and synthetic approach added to ASA self-correction and metacognitive activities (INA, 61 children). The children were first asked to write down as many words as possible associated with pictures of home, school, and community; the correctly written words formed the baseline information. The children were then instructed by their classroom teachers in six especially designed short texts and assessed in eight measurable "bujian" or radical tasks subserving three constructs: morpheme completion, bujian analysis and synthesis and bujian compounding. Multivariate analyses of variance showed that the children in the INA condition outperformed those in the other conditions in three of the measurable bujian tasks. A confirmatory factor analysis verified the stability of the eight tasks and their clustering into three constructs. From these results, we tentatively propose a "bujian sensitivity hypothesis" as a means of helping young Chinese children at risk for spelling disorders.

Orthographic knowledge in Chinese was hypothesized to affect elementary Chinese text comprehension (four essays) by 80 twelve-year-old ethnic alphasyllabary language users compared with 74 native Chinese speakers at similar reading level. This was tested with two rapid automatized naming tasks; two working memory tasks; three orthographic knowledge tasks in Chinese; and equivalent tasks in English. Multivariate analyses of covariance showed that the two groups were differentiated on most of the linguistic and cognitive tasks. Confirmatory factor analyses found four factors as hypothesized: text comprehension, verbal working memory, orthographic knowledge in Chinese, and orthographic knowledge in English. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that orthographic knowledge in Chinese explained a considerable amount of individual variation in elementary Chinese text comprehension. (Contains 4 tables.)

A sample of 141 Canadian children in grades 3 through 6 wrote to dictation 24 short sentences sampling 90 lexical items representing 10 inflectional morphological categories to study their relation to the written spelling of 40 sight words. The children were encouraged in 3, 30-minute teaching sessions to use multiple strategies of retrieval, sounding out, analogies, and visual verification. The inflectional categories were: possessive singular, possessive plural, third-person singular, plurals involving variant phonetic renderings of /s/, plurals involving stem change, preterite, past participle, contracted form, consonant doubling, and consonant singling. These 10 categories had reasonably high Cronbach's alpha coefficients and were found to be homogeneous by a principal component analysis. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the inflectional morphology tasks added unique variance (especially for consonant doubling and contracted form) to the spelling of sight words after accounting for age and reading ability. These results were further confirmed for a subgroup of 45 children comprising 14 grade 5 and 6 poor readers, and 14 reading-age and 17 chronological-age control students. Error analyses provided insights into students' use of retrieval and other strategies in their spelling of sight words. (Contains 4 tables and 1 note.)

The present study adapted the "Blueprint of the Reader" in comprehending language by Perfetti [2000, C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort. (Eds.), "The neurocognition of language" (pp. 167-208). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press] as a framework for understanding Chinese language and reading comprehension in a group of 361 secondary Forms 1, 3 and 4 Cantonese-speaking Chinese students (mean age of 15 years) in Hong Kong. This framework with some modifications was tested with nine specially designed Chinese language and reading tasks with reasonably high reliability and surface validity. The main hypothesis was that lexical knowledge consisting of derivational morphology; correction of characters, words and sentences; segmentation of text into phrases and sentences; and writing to dictation should explain considerable individual variations, as shown in the English literature. This was tested with component analyses and multiple regression analyses. The total battery accounted for 66.80% of the variation while lexical knowledge alone explained 33.51% of the individual variation in the overall school performance in Chinese reading and writing. The second hypothesis was that subgroups of poor and good language and reading comprehenders in Chinese would be expected to show overlapping yet different component structures and their performance in the individual component tasks would be expected to differ as tested with analyses of variance. The results confirmed this hypothesis. Task analyses of the written protocols of essay writing and of morphological processing (prefixing and suffixing) provided insight into well-formed and poorly formed writing and word formation according to principles of Chinese psycholinguistics and yielded information for theory-based practice.

The present study used the lexical decision (making YES/NO decision) and the vocalization (naming) paradigms in two reaction time experiments to examine the cohesiveness of onset-rime and peak-coda in the syllable structure of English lexical items. The aim was to study the effect of sonority hierarchy of liquids, nasals and obstruents on the accurate and rapid identification and naming of CCVCC words and pseudowords in relation to the spelling performance of 222 grades 4, 5 and 6 students. In the onset-rime lexical decision and naming tasks nasals were processed faster than the liquids and the obstruents. In the peak-coda lexical decision and naming the obstruents were processed faster than the liquids and nasals. The reaction time results suggest relationship with the spelling of English words even though the significant main effects of grade, spelling performance, mode of response and lexicality of the stimulus items need to be interpreted in the context of statistical interactions.

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span, tongue twister), 2-character Chinese pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming (letters, numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 518 Chinese children in Hong Kong in Grades 3 to 5. It was hypothesized that verbal working memory, together with a small contribution from the other constructs, would explain individual variation in the children's text comprehension. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld the hypotheses. Though Chinese pseudoword reading did not play an important mediating role in the effect of verbal working memory on text comprehension, verbal working memory had strong effects on pseudoword reading and text comprehension. The findings on the Chinese language support current Western literature as well as display the differential role of the constructs in Chinese reading comprehension.

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span and tongue-twister), two-character Chinese pseudoword reading (two tasks), rapid automatized naming (RAN) (letters and numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 31 less competent comprehenders compared with 37 reading comprehension control students and 23 chronological age controls. It was hypothesized that the target students would perform poorly on these cognitive and linguistic tasks as compared with their controls. Furthermore, verbal working memory and pseudoword reading would explain a considerable amount of individual variation in Chinese text comprehension. RAN would have a nonsignificant role in text comprehension. Structural equation analyses and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld these hypotheses. Our findings support current literature of the role of verbal working memory in reading comprehension found in English. The results, however, suggest differential role of the constructs and the tasks in reading comprehension and provide some answers for comprehension impairment in Chinese students.

In a 2-wave study of a cohort of 108 Chinese students (10- to 11-year-olds) learning English as a second language, the authors examined the relative effects of three Time 1 latent constructs--orthographic knowledge, phonological sensitivity, and word identification (reading and spelling of regular and exception words)--on the respective Time 2 performance. The authors posited autoregressive effects, in which Time 1 constructs affected their matching Time 2 performance (e.g., Time 1 orthographic knowledge on Time 2 orthographic knowledge), as well as reciprocal cross-domain effects (e.g., orthographic knowledge on word identification and vice versa). The model converged to a proper solution with reasonably good fit. The results suggest (a) strong stability in the children's word identification and phonological sensitivity, (b) substantial effects of word identification on subsequent orthographic knowledge and phonological sensitivity, particularly the former; and (c) greater variations in individuals' growth of orthographic knowledge.

The morpho-syllabic Japanese writing system consists of the phonetic scripts of hiragana and katakana, the logographic kanji derived from Chinese characters and the less well researched romaji based on the Roman alphabet. In four experiments we investigated the speed with which Japanese college students read, named, and transcribed romaji as compared with hiragana. We examined these college students' proficiency in transcribing isolated words in Experiments 1 and 2, their oral reading speeds at the text level in Experiment 3, and naming latencies for syllables in Experiment 4. The results taken together showed that while transcription speed was almost comparable between romaji and hiragana, reading speed was much slower in romaji than in hiragana. It is suggested that this dissociation can arise mainly from differential reading and writing experiences in romaji among Japanese people. Both theoretical and practical implications are drawn for the future of romaji as the putative fourth script in the Japanese writing system.

This study investigated the effect of phonological sensitivity of two comparable groups of grades 4 and 5 Chinese children, one a Putonghua-speaking group ("n" = 77) from Beijing and the other a Cantonese-speaking group ("n" = 80) from Hong Kong on English and Chinese pseudoword reading. It was hypothesized that the Beijing group would process more accurately suprasegmental lexical tones and phonological sensitivity tasks (rhyme detection and discrimination, two phoneme segmentation tasks deleting initial, medial and final phonemes) than their Hong Kong counterparts. Multivariate analyses of variance of the five tasks considered conjointly as dependent variables and spoken language groups and grades as independent variables confirmed the hypothesis. Separate stepwise multiple regression analyses with English and Chinese pseudoword reading as criteria also confirmed the related hypothesis of differential contribution by the speech-sound repetition and phonological sensitivity tasks to English and Chinese pseudoword reading. The better performance of the Putonghua group compared with the Cantonese counterpart might be explained by the phonologically more salient Putonghua mediated by the use of Pinyin as an adjunct in character and word reading.

This study examined the structural relationships between (a) the latent independent constructs of orthographic and lexical knowledge and phonological sensitivity and (b) the effect of these constructs on the latent construct of literacy manifested by reading aloud and spelling regular and exception English words in 156 Cantonese-speaking Chinese students (M age = 10.8 years) who were learning English as a second language in Hong Kong. Three carefully designed and item-analyzed indicators subserved the construct of orthographic and lexical knowledge, and another three indicators subserved the construct of phonological sensitivity. Our hypothesis of greater contribution of word-specific orthographic and lexical knowledge than phonological sensitivity to learning to read and spell English words in these Chinese children was supported by results from multiple regression, principal component analyses and especially by structural equation modeling. The various goodness-of-fit dexes showed the appropriateness of the indicators in measuring the latent constructs as well as the relationships among these constructs.

Examines the notion inherent in the Interactive Constituency Model of Perfetti and colleagues that in reading 2-character Chinese words phonology is activated at the character level rather than at the word level. Notes that the two lexical decision experiments and the naming experiment uphold the generality of character-level consistency effect of heterophonic homographs, even though there are some slight variations from the original study. (SG)

This commentary reviews forthcoming articles on the scientific study of dyslexia, genetic and neurophysiological aspects of dyslexia, cross-linguistic aspects of literacy development and dyslexia, and theory-based practice. It concludes that educators should continue to strive to promote theory-based research and evidence-based practice to achieve better prevention of and intervention for dyslexia. (Contains references.) (CR)

A study involving 91 children (ages 3-5) divided into more able and less able sub-groups found mathematical word problems containing inconsistent information were more difficult than those with consistent information. Word problems containing inadequate and redundant information were more difficult to explain than those items with just enough information. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A lexical decision study with two groups of tertiary students (n=43) differing in their Chinese language ability found that even for adult readers differing in their Chinese language ability, lexicality, frequency of characters, and the consistency of semantic radicals affect accurate and rapid character identification. Teaching suggestions are provided. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Explores 10- to 12-year old spellers' sensitivity to, and knowledge of, derivational morphology with lexical items varying in orthographic and phonological transparency and opacity. Finds some evidence that the depth of segmentation to base morphology and the converse process of derived morphology of words plays a role in the spelling performance of these children. (SC)

This study attempted to predict spelling errors of 222 children (grades 4-6) from their performance on pseudohomophone choice and rhyme matching tasks. Analysis showed that both accurate and rapid choice of pseudohomophones sounding like real words and rhyme matching contributed substantially to variations in spelling. (Contains extensive references.) (Author/DB)

This study investigated the role of online reading and simultaneous DECtalk (a text-to-speech computer system) auding in helping 192 above-average and below-average readers comprehend expository prose. Results showed significant differences among grades, reading levels, and modes of responses to the reading passages, but not for the experimental conditions. High student motivation was found. Similar results were obtained in a replication with poor readers. (Author/PB)

This paper argues for the role of an applied cognitive science perspective in education. It discusses the relevance and inadequacy of the brains metaphor and the computing metaphor, the parallel distributed processing nature of learning, and the importance of situational variables. Contributions of applied cognitive science to mathematics, composing, reading, and learning in general are outlined. (JDD)