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Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills?

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Abstract

Ninety-four Mainland Chinese children in the second and third years of kindergarten (mean age = 65 months, SD = 6.94) were tested on Pinyin letter-name knowledge, invented Pinyin spelling, general copying skills of unfamiliar print (in Korean, Hebrew and Vietnamese, ultimately combined to create a pure copying factor), delayed copying of characters, nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary knowledge, speeded number-naming, syllable deletion, and morphological awareness in order to examine unique correlates of beginning Chinese word reading and writing, which were also tested. With age, kindergarten level, and nonverbal reasoning statistically controlled, morphological awareness, speeded naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge uniquely explained Chinese word reading, whereas both the pure copying factor and delayed copying independently explained 11 and 5 % variance in Chinese word writing, respectively. Findings suggest a somewhat independent trajectory of developing word reading and writing skills in very young Chinese children and highlight the potential importance of both print-dependent and print-independent copying skills for the development of early word writing skill in Chinese.

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Notes

  1. The word “writing” in Chinese characters means writing from memory, as a dictation task. The terms “dictation” and “writing” will be used interchangeably in this paper because we think both are approximately reflective of the processes that Chinese children go through to write characters and words.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by RGC Grant 451811 from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. We thank all the children, their parents and the teachers, for their participation. We also thank Hiu Chung Chan, Mei Ho Lam, and Kai Yu for their work in preparing the testing materials and in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Wang, Catherine McBride-Chang & Shing Fong Chan

Authors
  1. Ying Wang
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  2. Catherine McBride-Chang
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  3. Shing Fong Chan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ying Wang.

Appendices: Examples of children’s copying samples

Appendices: Examples of children’s copying samples

Appendix 1: Delayed copying of Chinese character

沿

柄

远

茄

弯

Five characters

Appendix 2: Korean copying task

Appendix 3: Hebrew copying task

Appendix 4: Vietnamese copying task

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Wang, Y., McBride-Chang, C. & Chan, S.F. Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills?. Read Writ 27, 1281–1302 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-013-9486-8

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