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Pinyin and English Invented Spelling in Chinese-Speaking Students Who Speak English as a Second Language

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Abstract

This study examined pinyin (the official phonetic system that transcribes the lexical tones and pronunciation of Chinese characters) invented spelling and English invented spelling in 72 Mandarin-speaking 6th graders who learned English as their second language. The pinyin invented spelling task measured segmental-level awareness including syllable and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including lexical tones and tone sandhi in Chinese Mandarin. The English invented spelling task manipulated segmental-level awareness including syllable awareness and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including word stress. This pinyin task outperformed a traditional phonological awareness task that only measured segmental-level awareness and may have optimal utility to measure unique phonological and linguistic features in Chinese reading. The pinyin invented spelling uniquely explained variance in Chinese conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. The English invented spelling uniquely explained variance in conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. Our findings appear to support the role of phonological activation in Chinese reading. Our experimental linguistic manipulations altered the phonological awareness item difficulties.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the parents, teachers, and students in participating schools. Thanks to Agnes DeRaad for editorial support.

Funding

This Project was partially supported by an internal Grant from Fordham University to Yi Ding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Psychological and Educational Services, Graduate School of Education, Fordham University, 113 West 60th Street, Lowenstein Room 1008, New York, NY, 10023, USA

    Yi Ding

  2. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Ru-De Liu

  3. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

    Catherine A. McBride

  4. Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, 83209, USA

    Chung-Hau Fan

  5. Party School of Beijing Municipal Committee of C. P. C. (Beijing Administration Institute), Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Le Xu

  6. Teachers’ College, Beijing Union University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jia Wang

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  1. Yi Ding
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  2. Ru-De Liu
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  3. Catherine A. McBride
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  4. Chung-Hau Fan
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  5. Le Xu
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  6. Jia Wang
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Correspondence to Yi Ding or Ru-De Liu.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study closely followed all ethical standards established by Institutional Review Board at Fordham University and participating schools.

Appendix

Appendix

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Table 9 Scoring Rubric for English invented spelling
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Ding, Y., Liu, RD., McBride, C.A. et al. Pinyin and English Invented Spelling in Chinese-Speaking Students Who Speak English as a Second Language. J Psycholinguist Res 47, 1163–1187 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9585-4

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