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Use of Orthographic Knowledge in Reading by Chinese‐English Bi‐scriptal Children
Author(s) -
Cheung Him,
Chan Miranda,
Chong Karen
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00423.x
Subject(s) - orthography , linguistics , pronunciation , psychology , reading comprehension , reading (process) , phonology , meaning (existential) , chinese characters , cognitive psychology , philosophy , psychotherapist
We tested Chinese‐English bi‐scriptal fourth‐graders on reading aloud and comprehension in Chinese and English and their understanding of some structural principles underlying Chinese orthography. These principles concern phonological and semantic representation in written Chinese. Regressions showed that knowledge about phonological representation predicted reading aloud in both Chinese and English. Understanding of semantic representation predicted reading comprehension only in Chinese. To explain these findings, we argue that although young readers find it natural to interpret orthography as representation of sound in either script, looking for broad meaning cues in orthography is more spontaneous in Chinese than English reading. The present findings support the notion that children generally attempt to extract as much phonological and semantic information as possible directly from print in reading, although in many situations, such information provides only very rough cuing on word pronunciation and meaning.