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Morphological Awareness, Vocabulary Knowledge, Lexical Inference, and Text Comprehension in Chinese in Grade 3

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Chinese Literacy Learning in an Immersion Program

Abstract

This chapter details a study that examined the relationship among morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, lexical inference skills, and text comprehension in Chinese. The participants were a group of third grade children and were assessed with researcher designed tasks of vocabulary size and depth, lexical inference skills and comprehension of science texts in Chinese, all designed based on materials used in their Chinese curriculum. The results found that lexical inference skills mediated the contribution from compound awareness to depth of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese, and that vocabulary depth, compound awareness and lexical inference skills jointly contributed to text comprehension in Chinese. The findings highlight the importance of morphological awareness in Chinese literacy development, and also assert the need for more research on morphological awareness and academic literacy development among students in Chinese immersion programs.

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  1. Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Chan Lü

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  1. Chan Lü
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Lü, C. (2019). Morphological Awareness, Vocabulary Knowledge, Lexical Inference, and Text Comprehension in Chinese in Grade 3. In: Chinese Literacy Learning in an Immersion Program. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04987-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04987-4_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04986-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04987-4

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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