Correction to: Within- and cross-language contributions of morphological awareness to word reading and vocabulary in Chinese–English bilingual learners

The present study was designed to examine concurrent and longitudinal cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness and morphological awareness at two levels, the construct level and the reading level. We investigated whether phonological awareness and morphological awareness measured in one language are related to the same constructs measured in another language in Chinese-English bilinguals. Moreover, we assessed the cross-linguistic effects of the two constructs on reading concurrently and one year later in Grade 1. Participants of the study included 91 kindergarten and Grade 1 Chinese-English bilingual children. The children were tested twice, approximately one year apart, on a battery of cognitive and literacy measures in both languages. The data were analyzed with comprehensive path models that included phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and word reading in both languages. Our results demonstrate cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness and morphological awareness at the construct level and cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness to reading concurrently. Keywords: transfer; phonological awareness; morphological awareness; word reading; Chinese-English bilingual children

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Morphological Awareness Skills of Second- and Third-Grade Students With and Without Speech Sound Disorders

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/2019_lshss-19-00045 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (3) ◽

pp. 603-616

Author(s):

Kenn Apel ◽

Victoria S. Henbest

Keyword(s):

Word Reading ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Morphological Awareness ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Receptive Vocabulary ◽

Real Word ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Word Level ◽

Third Grade Students ◽

Pseudoword Reading

Purpose Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the main purpose of this study. Method Thirty second- and third-grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks and measures of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling. Results Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to strongly related to the students' literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children's real-word reading and spelling skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading. Conclusions Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD are discussed.

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Vowel development in young Mandarin-English bilingual children

Phonetica ◽

10.1515/phon-2021-2006 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Jing Yang

Keyword(s):

Bilingual Children ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Formant Frequency ◽

High Group ◽

English Bilingual ◽

English Vowels ◽

Vowel Systems ◽

Phonetic Features ◽

Cross Language ◽

L1 And L2

Abstract This study examined the development of vowel categories in young Mandarin -English bilingual children. The participants included 35 children aged between 3 and 4 years old (15 Mandarin-English bilinguals, six English monolinguals, and 14 Mandarin monolinguals). The bilingual children were divided into two groups: one group had a shorter duration (<1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-low group) and one group had a longer duration (>1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-high group). The participants were recorded producing one list of Mandarin words containing the vowels /a, i, u, y, ɤ/ and/or one list of English words containing the vowels /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, u, ʊ, o, ɑ, ʌ/. Formant frequency values were extracted at five equidistant time locations (the 20–35–50–65–80% point) over the course of vowel duration. Cross-language and within-language comparisons were conducted on the midpoint formant values and formant trajectories. The results showed that children in the Bi-low group produced their English vowels into clusters and showed positional deviations from the monolingual targets. However, they maintained the phonetic features of their native vowel sounds well and mainly used an assimilatory process to organize the vowel systems. Children in the Bi-high group separated their English vowels well. They used both assimilatory and dissimilatory processes to construct and refine the two vowel systems. These bilingual children approximated monolingual English children to a better extent than the children in the Bi-low group. However, when compared to the monolingual peers, they demonstrated observable deviations in both L1 and L2.

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How Chinese–English Bilingual Fourth Graders Draw on Syntactic Awareness in Reading Comprehension: Within‐ and Cross‐Language Effects

Reading Research Quarterly ◽

10.1002/rrq.400 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Xiuhong Tong ◽

Joyce Lok Yin Kwan ◽

Shelley Xiuli Tong ◽

S. Hélène Deacon

Keyword(s):

Reading Comprehension ◽

Fourth Graders ◽

Syntactic Awareness ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Language Effects ◽

Cross Language

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Cross-script transfer of word reading fluency in a mixed writing system: Evidence from a longitudinal study in Japanese

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716418000541 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 40 (2) ◽

pp. 235-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

TOMOHIRO INOUE ◽

GEORGE K. GEORGIOU ◽

HIROFUMI IMANAKA ◽

TAKAKO OSHIRO ◽

HIROYUKI KITAMURA ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

Phonological Awareness ◽

Path Analysis ◽

Reading Fluency ◽

Cognitive Skills ◽

Word Reading ◽

Morphological Awareness ◽

Rapid Automatized Naming ◽

Writing System ◽

The Cross

ABSTRACTWe examined the cross-lagged relations between word reading fluency in the two orthographic systems of Japanese: phonetic (syllabic) Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. One hundred forty-two Japanese-speaking children were assessed on word reading fluency twice in Grade 1 (Times 1 and 2) and twice in Grade 2 (Times 3 and 4). Nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were also assessed in Time 1. Results of path analysis revealed that Time 1 Hiragana fluency predicted Time 2 Kanji fluency after controlling for the cognitive skills. Time 2 Hiragana fluency did not predict Time 3 Kanji fluency or vice versa after the autoregressor was controlled, but Hiragana and Kanji fluency were reciprocally related between Times 3 and 4. These findings provide evidence for a cross-script transfer of word reading fluency across the two contrastive orthographic systems, and the first evidence of fluency in a morphographic script predicting fluency development in a phonetic script within the same language.

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Language contact within the speaker: Phonetic variation and crosslinguistic influence

10.31219/osf.io/jhsfc ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Khia A. Johnson ◽

Molly Babel

Keyword(s):

Language Contact ◽

Mutual Influence ◽

Spontaneous Speech ◽

Recent Model ◽

Phonetic Variation ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Speech Communities ◽

Crosslinguistic Influence ◽

Cross Language ◽

Language Influence

A recent model of sound change posits that the direction of change is determined, at least in part, by the distribution of variation within speech communities (Harrington, Kleber, Reubold, Schiel, & Stevens, 2018; Harrington & Schiel, 2017). We explore this model in the context of bilingual speech, asking whether the less variable language constrains phonetic variation in the more variable language, using a corpus of spontaneous speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (Johnson, Babel, Fong, & Yiu, 2020). As predicted, given the phonetic distributions of stop obstruents in Cantonese compared to English, intervocalic English /b d g/ were produced with less voicing for Cantonese-English bilinguals and word-final English /t k/ were more likely to be unreleased compared to spontaneous speech from two monolingual English control corpora (Pitt, Johnson, Hume, Kiesling, & Raymond, 2005; Swan, 2016). Cantonese phonology is more gradient in terms of voicing initial obstruents (Clumeck, Barton, Macken, & Huntington, 1981; W. Y. P. Wong, 2006) than permitting releases of final obstruents, which is categorically prohibited Bauer & Benedict (2011); Khouw & Ciocca (2006). Neither Cantonese-English bilingual initial voicing nor word-final stop release patterns were significantly impacted by language mode. These results provide evidence that the phonetic variation in crosslinguistically linked categories in bilingual speech is shaped by the distribution of phonetic variation within each language, thus suggesting a mechanistic account for why some segments are more susceptible to cross-language influence than others in studies of mutual influence.

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