The present study examined pedagogic components of Chinese reading literacy in a representative sample of 1164 Grades 7, 9 and 11 Chinese students (mean age of 15 years) from 11 secondary schools in Hong Kong with each student tested for about 2.5 hours. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses showed that across the three grade levels, the eight reading literacy constructs (Essay Writing, Morphological Compounding, Correction of Characters and Words, Segmentation of Text, Text Comprehension, Copying of Characters and Words, Writing to Dictation and Reading Aloud), each subserved by multiple indicators, had differential concurrent prediction of scaled internal school performance in reading and composing. Writing–reading and their interactive effects were foremost in their predictive power, followed by performance in error correction and writing to dictation, morphological compounding, segmenting text and copying with reading aloud playing a negligible role. Our battery of tasks with some refinement could serve as a screening instrument for secondary Chinese students struggling with Chinese reading literacy.
AdamsM. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2.
AndersonR. C.LiW.KuY.-M.ShuH.WuN. (2003). Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 52–57.
3.
BauerL. (2001). Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
BrownT. A. (2006). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York: Guilford Press.
5.
ByrneB. M. (1998). Structural equation modeling with LISREL, PRELIS, and SIMPLIS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
6.
CampbellJ. R.KellyD. L.MullisI. V. S.MartinM. O.SainsburyM. (2001). Framework and specifications for PIRLS assessment 2001 (2nd ed.). Chestnut Hill, MA, PIRLS International Study Center, Boston, MA: Lynch School of Education, Boston College.
7.
ChaoY. R. (1968). A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
8.
ChapelleC. (2011). Validation in language assessment. In HinkelE. (Ed.). Handbook of research in second language testing and learning (Vol. II) (pp. 717–730). New York: Routledge.
9.
CheungG. W.RensvoldR. B. (2002). Evaluating goodness-of-fit indexes for testing measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 233–255.
10.
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Language Research Institute (Ed.). (2009). Xiandai hanyu cidian. Beijing: Commercial Press. [in Chinese].
11.
DanemanM.StaintonM. (1993). The generation effect in reading and proofreading. Is it easier or harder to detect errors in one’s own writing?Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5, 297–313.
12.
DeFrancisJ. (1989). Visible speech: The diverse oneness of writing systems. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
13.
FitzgeraldJ.ShanahanT. (2000). Reading and writing relations and their development. Educational Psychologist, 35, 39–50.
14.
FletcherJ. M. (2006). Measuring reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 323–330.
15.
HackerD. J.PlumbC.ButterfieldE. C.QuathamerD.HeinekenE. (1994). Text revisions: Detection and correction of errors. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 65–78.
16.
HayesJ. R. (2006). New directions in writing theory. In MacArthurC. A.GrahamS.FitzgeraldJ. (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (pp. 28–40). New York: Guilford Press.
17.
HoC. S.-H.BryantP. (1997a). Learning to read Chinese beyond the logographic phase. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 276–289.
18.
HoC. S.-H.BryantP. (1997b). Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese. Developmental Psychology, 33, 946–951.
19.
HoC. S.-H.ChanD. W.-O.ChungK.TsangS.-M.LeeS.-H.ChengR. W.-Y. (2007). The Hong Kong test of specific learning difficulties in reading and writing for primary school students – second edition [HKT-P(II)]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Specific Learning Difficulties Research Team.
20.
HoC. S.-H.ChanD. W.-O.LeeS.-H.TsangS.-M.LuanV. H. (2004). Cognitive profiling and preliminary subtyping in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Cognition, 91, 43–75.
21.
HoC. S.-H.ChanD. W.-O.TsangS.-M.LeeS.-H. (2002). The cognitive profile and multiple deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Developmental Psychology, 38, 543–553.
22.
HoM. K. (2006). [The ability of secondary Chinese language teachers in differentiating, describing, and correcting errors in compositions]. Education Journal, 34, 115–131. [in Chinese].
23.
Hong Kong SAR Government Census and Statistics Department (January, 2011). Hong Kong: The facts. www.censtatd.gov.hk.
24.
KaneM. T. (2006). Validation. In BrennanR. L. (Ed.), Educational measurement (4th ed., pp. 17–64). Westport, CT: American Council on Education/Praeger.
25.
KintschW. (1994). Text comprehension, memory, and learning. American Psychologist, 49, 294–303.
26.
KintschW.KintschE. (2005). Comprehension. In ParisS.G.StahlS.A. (Eds.), Children’s reading comprehension and assessment (pp. 71–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
27.
KuoL.-J.AndersonR. C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161–180.
28.
LeongC. K.TseS. K.LohK. Y.HauK. T. (2008). Text comprehension in Chinese children: Relative contribution of verbal working memory, pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming, and onset-rime phonological segmentation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 135–149.
29.
MacArthurC.A.GrahamS.FitzgeraldJ. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of writing research. New York: Guilford.
30.
MarshH. W.HauK. T.GraysonD. (2005). Goodness of fit in structural equation models. In Maydeu-OlivaresA.McArdleJ. J. (Eds.), Contemporary psychometrics: A Festschrift for Roderick P. McDonald (pp. 225–340). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
31.
McBride-ChangC.ChoJ.-R.LiuH.WagnerR. K.ShuH.ZhouA.CheukC. S.- M.MuseA. (2005). Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological and morphological awareness to reading in Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea and America. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 140–160.
32.
McBride-ChangC.TardifT.ChoJ.-R.ShuH.FletcherP.StokesS. F.WongA.LeungK. (2008). What’s in a word? Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in three languages. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 437–462.
33.
MillerJ.SchwanenflugelP. J. (2006). Prosody of syntactically complex sentences in the oral reading of young children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 839–853.
34.
MillerJ.SchwanenflugelP. J. (2008). A longitudinal study of the development of reading prosody as a dimension of oral reading fluency in early elementary school children. Reading Research Quarterly, 43, 336–354.
35.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction – Reports of the subgroups. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
36.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2003). Literacy skills for the world of tomorrow – further results from PISA 2000. Paris: Author.
37.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2009). PISA (Program for International Student Assessment 2009). Assessment framework – Key competencies in reading, mathematics, and science. Paris: Author.
38.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2010). PISA 2009 results. Overcoming social background – Equality in learning opportunities and outcomes (Vol. II). Paris: Author. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/97892641504-en.
39.
PackardJ. L. (2000). The morphology of Chinese: A linguistic and cognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40.
PerfettiC. A. (2000). Comprehending written language: A blueprint of the reader. In BrownC. M.HagoortP. (Eds.). The neurocognition of language (pp. 167–208). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
41.
PerfettiC. A. (2003). The universal grammar of reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 3–24.
42.
PerfettiC. A.LandiN.OakhillJ. (2005). The acquisition of reading comprehension skills. In SnowlingM. J.HulmeC. (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp. 227–247). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
43.
PerfettiC. A.LiuY. (2005). Orthography to phonology and meaning: Comparisons across and within writing systems. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 193–210.
44.
PerfettiC. A.LiuY.TanL.-H. (2002). How the mind can meet the brain in reading: A comparative writing systems approach. In KaoH. S. R.LeongC. K.GaoD.-G. (Eds.), Cognitive neuroscience studies of the Chinese language (pp. 35–60). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
45.
PilottiM.ChodorowM. (2009). Error detection/correction in collaborative writing. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 245–260.
46.
ShanahanT. (2006). Relations among oral language, reading, and writing development. In MacArthurC. A.GrahamS.FitzgeraldJ. (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (pp. 171–183). New York: Guilford.
47.
ShuH.ChenX.AndersonR. C.WuN.XuanY. (2003). Properties of school Chinese: Implications for learning to read. Child Development, 74, 27–47.
48.
ShuH.McBride-ChangC.WuS.LiuH. (2006). Understanding Chinese developmental dyslexia: Morphological awareness as a core cognitive construct. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 122–133.
SiokW. T.FletcherP. (2001). The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition. Developmental Psychology, 37, 886–899.
51.
TanL. H.SpinksJ. A.EdenG. F.PerfettiC. A.SiokW. T. (2005). Reading depends on writing, in Chinese, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, June14, 102(24), 8781–8785.
52.
TseS. K.ShumS. K.MiaoK. O.KiW. W. (2001). [Errors in mapping out essay topics and language expressions.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. [in Chinese]
53.
TzengO. J. L. (2002). Current issues in learning to read Chinese. In LiW.GaffneyJ. S.PackardJ. L. (Eds.), Chinese children’s reading acquisition: Theoretical and pedagogical issues (pp. 3–15). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
WangM.ChengC. (2008). Subsyllabic unit preference in young Chinese children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 291–314.
56.
WangM.ChengC.ChenS.-W. (2006). Contribution of morphological awareness to Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 542–553.
57.
WangY. (1997). The composition and meaning of Chinese characters and words. In PengD. L.ShuH.ChenH.-C. (Eds.), Cognitive research on Chinese language (pp. 34–64). Shandong, China: Shandong Education Publishing.
58.
ZhangJ.AndersonR. C.WangQ.PackardJ.WuX.TangS.KeX. (2011). Insight into the structure of compound words among speakers of Chinese and English. Applied Psycholinguistics. Advance online publication. Doi:10.1017/S0142716411000555
