Metalinguistic contribution to reading comprehension: A comparison of Primary 3 students from China and Singapore

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-684
Author(s):  
Sun Baoqi ◽  
Guangwei Hu ◽  
Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Syntactic Awareness

AbstractThis study examined the within- and cross-language metalinguistic contribution of three components of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness) to reading comprehension in monolingual Chinese-speaking children from Mainland China (n = 190) and English–Chinese bilingual children from Singapore (n = 390). Moreover, the effect of home language use on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading performance was investigated. For monolingual children, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after partialing out the effects of age, nonverbal intelligence, and oral vocabulary, syntactic awareness uniquely predicted 7%–13% of the variance in reading comprehension measures, whereas this relationship was not observed between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. For the bilingual children, within-language regression analyses revealed that English/Chinese morphological awareness and syntactic awareness both contributed significantly to English/Chinese reading measures over and above vocabulary and phonological awareness. Cross-linguistically, structure equation modeling results demonstrated that the bilingual children’s English and Chinese metalinguistic awareness were closely related and jointly supported reading comprehension in both languages, thus lending support to Koda’s transfer facilitation model. Furthermore, home language use was found to contribute to the bilingual children’s reading proficiency via its impact on metalinguistic awareness. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy and pedagogical implications that can be drawn from these findings.

Metalinguistic aspects of bilingual processing

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Bialystok
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Syntactic Awareness ◽  
Alternate Conception ◽  
Bilingual Processing ◽  
And Control ◽  
Metalinguistic Ability

This chapter examines differences in metalinguistic development between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of three subcategories: word awareness, syntactic awareness, and phonological awareness. In each case, some studies have reported advantages for bilingual children, but equally, other studies have found either no difference between the groups, or, in some cases, monolingual advantages. In the discussion of each of these areas, the kinds of tasks for which bilingual and monolingual children perform differently are identified. In none of these three subcategories of metalinguistic awareness do bilingual children exhibit a uniform and consistent advantage over monolinguals. An alternate conception of metalinguistic ability is proposed in which two cognitive processes, analysis and control, are directly responsible for task performance. These processes are involved in all metalinguistic tasks but to different degrees. Re-examining the results in this way reveals that bilingual advantages occur reliably on tasks that make high demands on control but are not evident in tasks that make high demands on analysis. The implications of this pattern for metalinguistic ability are considered.

Early emergence of syntactic awareness and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children’s judgments

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Foursha-Stevenson ◽  
Elena Nicoladis
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Syntactic Awareness ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
French And English ◽  
Better Than

Bilingual children sometimes perform better than same-aged monolingual children on metalinguistic awareness tasks, such as a grammaticality judgment. Some of these differences can be attributed to bilinguals having to learn to control attention to language choice. This study tested the hypothesis that bilingual children, as young as preschool age, would score overall higher than monolingual children on a grammaticality judgment test. French–English bilingual preschoolers judged the acceptability of three constructions in French and English (i.e. adjective–noun ordering, obligatoriness of a determiner, and object pronoun placement). Their performance was compared with that of a group of age-matched English monolinguals. The results showed that the bilingual children scored higher than the monolingual children. These results demonstrate that syntactic awareness develops quite early for bilinguals. Additionally, the bilingual children demonstrated cross-linguistic influence of core syntactic structure in French, as their judgments were affected by English acceptability.

Becoming Bilingual During Early Childhood

1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene E. Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Use Pattern ◽  
Bilingual Proficiency

Spanish/English bilingual and monolingual English children, ages 36-50 months, were recorded during interactions with their mothers. An analysis of the recorded language was performed utilizing selected morphological and syntactic features. An analysis of home language use was also performed for bilingual children. Results indicate: (1) a definite bilingual proficiency character with "weighted" proficiency in English; (2) no significant difference on English measures between bilingual and monolingual children; (3) a differential language use pattern for Spanish and English by bilingual children in the home. These results provide new insights into the bilingual acquisition phenomenon in early childhood.

Morphological awareness, word reading, and reading comprehension in Portuguese

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEDRO VIANA DE FREITAS ◽  
MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA ◽  
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Fourth Grade ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Unique Variance ◽  
Reading Accuracy ◽  
Nonverbal Ability

ABSTRACTWe investigated the unique effects of morphological awareness on several aspects of reading in Portuguese. We tested 132 Portuguese-speaking children in the fourth grade. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included inflectional and derivational transformations. Results indicated that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension after controlling for the effects of nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained unique variance in reading comprehension after adding word reading as a control. In conclusion, morphological awareness has important roles in both word reading and reading comprehension in Portuguese. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.

Inflectional morphological awareness and word reading and reading comprehension in Greek

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 1007-1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
KYRIAKOULA M. ROTHOU ◽  
SUSANA PADELIADU
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Second Graders ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary

ABSTRACTThe study explored the contribution of two aspects of inflectional morphological awareness, verb inflection and noun–adjective inflection, to word reading and reading comprehension in the Greek language, which is an orthographically transparent language. Participants (120 first graders, 123 second graders, 126 third graders) were given two oral language experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness. Furthermore, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension were evaluated. It was revealed that noun–adjective inflectional morphology contributed significantly to decoding only in first grade, while verb inflectional morphology had a significant contribution to reading comprehension in third grade. It is interesting that inflectional morphological awareness did not predict reading skills for second graders. Phonological awareness was a firm predictor of word reading in all grades and made a unique contribution in Grades 2 and 3. Finally, in all grades, receptive vocabulary was a steady predictor of reading comprehension, whereas expressive vocabulary predicted only first-grade reading comprehension. It is suggested that inflectional morphological awareness may be an important predictor of early reading in a language with a shallow orthography and a rich morphology.

Unraveling the complexity of the relations of metalinguistic skills to word reading with struggling adult readers: Shared, independent, and interactive effects

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (03) ◽  
pp. 765-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth L. Tighe ◽  
Mary A. Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Orthographic Knowledge ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Metalinguistic Skills

AbstractThis study investigates the shared, independent, and interactive effects of metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge) to word reading with a sample of struggling adult readers. Controlling for vocabulary knowledge, a second-order latent factor of metalinguistic awareness accounted for unique variance (62.5%) in adults’ word reading skills. Two-way latent interactions between the metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness × morphological awareness, morphological awareness × orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness × orthographic knowledge) revealed unique interactive contributions (1%–5.2%) of these skills to word reading controlling for the metalinguistic skill main effects and vocabulary knowledge. In particular, high levels of morphological awareness are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. In addition, higher phonological awareness skills are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low orthographic knowledge. These results indicate the importance as well as the complexity of the nature of metalinguistic skills underlying word reading for struggling adult readers. The theoretical, empirical, and applied implications of these findings are discussed in the context of researchers and practitioners invested in improving outcomes in adult literacy programs.

scholarly journals Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Acquisition in the Spanish Language

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan E. Jiménez González ◽  
María del Rosario Ortiz González
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Path Analysis ◽  
Reading Acquisition ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Print Awareness ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Study Support

This research was designed to establish the importance of phonological awareness and print awareness in learning to read Spanish. A sample of 136 preliterate Spanish children (70 boys and 66 girls) whose ages ranged from 5.1 to 6.6 years (average age 5.6 years) participated in the study. The results, using path analysis, from this longitudinal study support the existence of a relationship between phonological awareness and reading. Moreover, the findings of this study reveal the importance of syllabic awareness, at least in Spanish, in the development of other levels of phonological awareness and in its early relation with reading. The results also confirm the existence of a relationship between print awareness and reading comprehension.

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