Abstract
The importance of phonological awareness (PA) for the acquisition of literacy skills has been widely recognized. Across languages, PA is commonly examined using the Oddity test, however, for Chinese-speaking children, Pinyin invented spelling is recommended as being a more powerful tool to assess PA. However, it is still unclear whether this holds true for learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). To address this issue, we administered an oddity test and a Pinyin invented spelling task to explore Chinese PA in 43 Arabic and 40 English CSL learners at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. The results generated two major findings. First, Pinyin invented spelling revealed more significant cross-group differences in Chinese PA between the Arabic and English CSL learners than the oddity test. Second, the participants’ performance in Pinyin invented spelling was a stronger predictor of character-reading and character-writing skills than their performance in the oddity test. The overall findings suggest that Pinyin invented spelling may be a more powerful measurement of Chinese PA for CSL learners in comparison to the conventional test, in line with the findings reported for Chinese-speaking children. The theoretical implications for understanding the role of phonological skills in the growth of Chinese literacy skills and practical suggestions for measuring Chinese PA are proposed.
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Notes
The present study adopts the criteria for effect size proposed by Cohen (1988) and Cohen’s benchmarks are .40 = small, .70 = medium and 1.00 = big.
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This work was supported by China Scholarship Council [[2013]3009] and Minzu University of China [2020QNPY70].
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Zhang, H., Roberts, L. A Comparison of Pinyin Invented Spelling and Oddity Test in Measuring Phonological Awareness in L2 Learners of Chinese. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 375–396 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09700-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09700-z