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Chinese-English biscriptal reading: cognitive component skills across orthographies

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Abstract

This study examined the associations of Chinese visual-orthographic skills, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness to Chinese and English word reading among 326 Hong Kong Chinese second- and fifth-graders learning English as a second language. Developmentally, tasks of visual-orthographic skill, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness improved with age. However, the extent to which each of the constructs explained variance in Chinese and English word reading was stable across age but differed by orthography. Across grades, visual-orthographic skills and morphological awareness, but not phonological awareness, were uniquely associated with Chinese character recognition with age and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. In contrast, Chinese visual-orthographic skills and phonological awareness, but not morphological awareness, accounted for unique variance in English word reading even with the effects of Chinese character recognition and other reading-related cognitive tasks statistically controlled. Thus, only visual-orthographic skills appeared to be a consistent factor in explaining both Chinese and English word reading, perhaps in part because Hong Kong Chinese children are taught in school to read both Chinese and English using a “look and say” strategy that emphasizes visual analysis for word recognition. These findings extend previous research on Chinese visual-orthographic skills to English word reading and underscore commonality and uniqueness in bilingual reading acquisition.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by grant by Hong Kong government RGC grant 448907 to Catherine McBride-Chang, and a direct grant 2020910 from The Chinese University of Hong Kong to Catherine McBride-Chang and Xiuli Tong. We thank all the teachers, the children, and their parents in the five schools in Hong Kong for their cooperation and Yvonne Chow for her organization and experimentation in schools.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

    Xiuli Tong & Catherine McBride-Chang

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  1. Xiuli Tong
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  2. Catherine McBride-Chang
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Correspondence to Catherine McBride-Chang.

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Tong, X., McBride-Chang, C. Chinese-English biscriptal reading: cognitive component skills across orthographies. Read Writ 23, 293–310 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9211-9

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