Abstract
Two recent studies indicated that writing Chinese is correlated to Chinese-American (CA) students’ spatial skills. The current study investigated whether writing Chinese would have the same relationship to mathematics skills. The Scholastic Assessment Test—Mathematics (SAT-Math) scores were analysed for 150 CA undergraduates: 42 writers of Chinese and 108 non-writers of Chinese. The results suggested a strong correlation between writing Chinese and success on SAT-Math. An underlying mechanism may be the common cognitive components that encompass writing Chinese, spatial tasks, and SAT-Math. Contrary to previous findings with other populations in the USA, CA females scored slightly higher on SAT-Math than males. The finding supports the cultural relativity theory of gender difference on SAT-Math.
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Li, C., Nuttall, R. Writing Chinese and mathematics achievement: A study with Chinese-American undergraduates. Math Ed Res J 13, 15–27 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03217096
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03217096