The Roles of Phonological Awareness and Oral Vocabulary Knowledge in English-Chinese Biliteracy Acquisition among Chinese Heritage Language Learners
In this study, we examined how reading development varies between two typologically distant languages within biliteracy learners. Specifically, we compared the relative contributions of two oral variables, oral vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness, to word reading development in school-age Chinese heritage language (CHL) speakers who were learning to read Chinese and English concurrently. The results showed that oral vocabulary knowledge accounted for a significant portion of the variance in Chinese character reading, but it contributed to English and Pinyin word decoding only indirectly through phonological awareness within each language. Phonological awareness was significant in explaining performance differences in English and Pinyin word reading across languages as well. These findings suggest that phonological awareness and oral vocabulary knowledge play distinct roles in learning to read in typologically diverse languages; more importantly, that each oral sub-skill contributes differently to word reading development when shared across typologically diverse languages.