Metalinguistic Awareness And Rapid Naming As Predictors Of Chinese And English Word Reading In Chinese Children

The influence of metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming on word reading has long been studied.Most of those studies,however,have attached great importance to one single component of metalinguistic awareness(phonological awareness,morphological awareness,orthographic awareness),with a special focus on the impact of phonological awareness to word reading.So far,the comprehensive analysis and research on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness,rapid naming and word reading are still lacking;what's more,whether reading two distinct languages imposes similar or differential demands on metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming and whether these skills can also transfer across two languages remain to be further discussed.In view of these problems,this study aims to systematically explore the impact of Chinese children's metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming on Chinese and English word reading.The specific research questions are as follows: 1)Do Chinese metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming predict Chinese children's Chinese character recognition? 2)Do English metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming predict Chinese children's English word reading? 3)Is there a cross-linguistic transfer from Chinese metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming to English word reading? 4)Is there a cross-linguistic transfer from English metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming to Chinese character reading?This study administered a battery of phonological awareness,morphological awareness,orthographic awareness,rapid naming and Chinese and English word reading tests to 103 Chinese fifth-graders and sixth-graders.The results show that: 1)Chinese morphological awareness,Chinese orthographic awareness and Chinese rapid naming significantly predict Chinese character recognition;2)English morphological awareness,English phonological awareness and English rapid naming significantly predict English word reading;3)There is an indirect cross-linguistic transfer from Chinese metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming to English word reading;4)There is a direct cross-linguistic transfer from English metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming to Chinese single-character recognition,as well as an indirect cross-linguistic transfer in two-character recognition.These findings suggest that there is cross-linguisticuniversality between morphological awareness and rapid naming and word reading,while orthographic awareness and phonological awareness highlight the uniqueness of Chinese and English word reading.In addition,to some extent metalinguistic awareness and rapid naming transfer across two different languages.