Language-specific and language-general influences on reading comprehension development: comparisons between an alphabetic and morphographic script

成功的阅读技能对于充分参与当今社会是至关重要的，因为除了教育和就业外，一系列文化和社会活动还依赖于有效和准确地从文本中吸收信息的能力。一个独立和成功的读者必须同时培养足够的单词阅读和阅读理解能力。我们的重点是促进阅读理解的发展，这是大多数阅读的目标。我们的研究将建立在对语素(形态意识)的理解与儿童的阅读理解水平相关的证据的基础上。语素是(口语)词中最小的意义单位，例如，‘un’是一个语素，当加到一个词根上时，表示‘不’，如在‘不高兴’中。对语素的理解对于理解复杂的多义词英语单词至关重要，比如‘不快乐’，‘快乐’，‘不快乐’，以及它们之间的联系。我们的目的是通过比较两组读者：学习阅读英语的英国儿童和学习同时阅读中文和英语的香港中文儿童，来加深我们对形态意识和阅读理解之间关系的理解。之所以研究这两类年轻读者，是因为英语和汉语的书写系统对语素的重视程度不同。英语书写系统代表语言的口语发音，而汉语书写系统代表语素。因此，要用英语大声朗读一个不熟悉的单词，初学者必须先读出字母。通常，年轻读者通常知道他们以前从未在印刷形式中见过的单词的含义。通过试探单词，年轻读者可以获得他/她的口语词典中的单词含义。相比之下，初学汉语的读者不能“听出”单词：对汉语单词的发音几乎没有线索，但因为书写系统代表语素，所以可以找到单词含义的线索，即使实际的单词以前从未见过印刷形式。例如，太阳的语义部首也用于其他单词的书面形式，如温暖和傍晚，以及阳光，这些都是与太阳有关的概念。我们有三个目标：1)我们将比较形态意识对儿童第一语言阅读理解的影响，比较英语学习者和中国第一语言学习者，他们是初级、中级和高级读者，以确定在早期识字发展过程中这种关系的变化。对于英语，我们认为，对于高级年轻读者来说，形态意识将是最重要的，因为越复杂的文本拥有更多的多义词。相反，我们认为汉语的形态意识会从阅读的最早阶段影响汉语的第一语言阅读，因为书写系统代表了语素。2)通过比较形态意识对两组学生英语阅读理解的影响，确定形态意识对英语阅读理解的影响是普遍的还是特定的。如果形态意识是一种普遍的语言意识，那么对于香港华人群体来说，它应该会对初学者的英语阅读理解产生更重要的影响，因为他们在阅读发展的早期就已经适应了形态。如果这种影响是特定于语言的，那么在两组学生中，形态意识对英语阅读理解的影响应该是相似的。3)我们试图了解为什么香港中国读者的英语阅读理解没有跟上他们的英语单词阅读。我们预计，在其他第二语言群体中发现的阅读理解水平差距可能会受到特定语言形态意识的影响。通过这项工作产生的知识将影响阅读发展理论，也将影响第一语言和第二语言学习者的教学。

Successful reading skills are essential for full engagement in today's society because, in addition to education and employment, a range of cultural and social activities rely on the ability to efficiently and accurately assimilate information from text. An independent and successful reader must develop both adequate word reading and reading comprehension. Our focus is to advance knowledge about the development of reading comprehension, the goal of most reading.Our research will build on evidence that an understanding of morphemes (morphological awareness) is related to a child's reading comprehension level. Morphemes are the smallest meaning units within (spoken) words, e.g., 'un' is a morpheme that when added to a base word indicates 'not', as in 'unhappy'. An understanding of morphemes is critical for understanding complex mutimorpheme English words such as 'unhappy', 'happier', 'unhappiness', and how they are related. We aim to further our understanding of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension by comparing two groups of reader: English children learning to read English, and Hong Kong Chinese children who are learning to read Chinese and English in parallel. The reason for studying these two groups of young readers is that the English and Chinese writing systems place a different emphasis on morphemes. The English writing system represents the spoken sounds of the language, whereas the Chinese writing system represents the morphemes. Thus, to read an unfamiliar word aloud in English the beginner reader has to sound out the letters. Typically, young readers often know the meanings of words that they have not seen before in their printed form. By sounding out the word, the young reader can access the word meaning in his/her spoken lexicon. In contrast, beginner readers of Chinese cannot 'sound out' words: there are few clues to the pronunciation of Chinese words, but because the writing system represents the morphemes there are clues to the word meanings, even if the actual word has not been seen before in its printed form. For example, the semantic radical for sun is also used in the written forms of other words such as warm and evening, as well as shine, all sun-related concepts. We have three aims: 1) We will compare the influence of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in a child's first language, comparing English and Chinese first language learners, who are beginner, intermediate, and advanced readers to identify changes in the relation across early literacy development. For English, we propose that morphological awareness will be most important for advanced young readers, because more complex texts have a greater number of multipmorphemic words. In contrast, we propose that Chinese morphological awareness will influence Chinese first language reading from the earliest stages of reading because the writing system represents morphemes. 2) We seek to determine if the influence of morphological awareness is language-general or language-specific by comparing its influence on the English reading comprehension of the two groups. If morphological awareness is language-general, it should have a more important influence on beginner readers' English reading comprehension for the Hong Kong Chinese group because they are attuned to morphology early in reading development. If the influence is language-specific, morphological awareness should influence English reading comprehension similarly in both groups. 3) We seek to understand why the English reading comprehension of Hong Kong Chinese readers does not keep apace with their English word reading. We expect that the reading comprehension proficiency gap, found in other second language groups, may be influenced by language-specific morphological awareness.The knowledge generated through this work will influence reading development theory and also pedagogy for first and second language learners.