The effect of dialogic reading paired with multisensory learning of Chinese characters and morphological awareness skills for L2 Chinese young learners at Hong Kong kindergartens

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

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Perceptual expertise with Chinese characters predicts Chinese reading performance among Hong Kong Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0243440 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. e0243440

Author(s):

Yetta Kwailing Wong ◽

Christine Kong-Yan Tong ◽

Ming Lui ◽

Alan C.-N. Wong

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Developmental Dyslexia ◽

Word Reading ◽

Reading Performance ◽

Perceptual Fluency ◽

Hong Kong Chinese ◽

Perceptual Expertise ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Hong Kong Chinese Children

This study explores the theoretical proposal that developmental dyslexia involves a failure to develop perceptual expertise with words despite adequate education. Among a group of Hong Kong Chinese children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia, we investigated the relationship between Chinese word reading and perceptual expertise with Chinese characters. In a perceptual fluency task, the time of visual exposure to Chinese characters was manipulated and limited such that the speed of discrimination of a short sequence of Chinese characters at an accuracy level of 80% was estimated. Pair-wise correlations showed that perceptual fluency for characters predicted speeded and non-speeded word reading performance. Exploratory hierarchical regressions showed that perceptual fluency for characters accounted for 5.3% and 9.6% variance in speeded and non-speeded reading respectively, in addition to age, non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and perceptual fluency for digits. The findings suggest that perceptual expertise with words plays an important role in Chinese reading performance in developmental dyslexia, and that perceptual training is a potential remediation direction.

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HCI Technology with Mastery Learning Approach for Children Learning Chinese Characters Writing in Hong Kong

2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) ◽

10.1109/icalt49669.2020.00073 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ka Yan FUNG ◽

Kwong Chiu FUNG

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Mastery Learning ◽

Learning Approach ◽

Chinese Characters

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