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

特定语言和一般语言对阅读理解发展的影响：字母和形态脚本之间的比较

• 批准号: ES/K010425/1
• 负责人: Kate Cain
• 金额: $ 9.99万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FK010425%2F1
• 关键词: Language; specific; language; general; influences

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.

成功的阅读技能对于充分参与当今社会至关重要，因为除了教育和就业之外，一系列文化和社会活动都依赖于有效和准确地从文本中吸收信息的能力。一个独立而成功的阅读者必须培养足够的文字阅读和阅读理解能力。我们的重点是推进关于阅读理解发展的知识，这是大多数阅读的目标。我们的研究将建立在对语素的理解（形态意识）与儿童阅读理解水平相关的证据之上。语素是（口语）单词中最小的意义单位，例如，“un”是一个语素，当添加到基本单词时表示“不”，如“不高兴”。对语素的理解对于理解诸如“不开心”、“更快乐”、“不快乐”等复杂的多词素英语单词以及它们之间的关系至关重要。本研究旨在通过比较两组读者：学习阅读英语的英语儿童和学习中英文并行阅读的香港中文儿童，进一步了解词形意识与阅读理解之间的关系。之所以要研究这两类年轻读者，是因为英汉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发音，而汉语书写系统代表语素。因此，要大声朗读一个不熟悉的英语单词，初学者必须读出字母。通常，年轻的读者通常知道他们以前在印刷形式中没有见过的单词的意思。通过读出单词，年轻的读者可以在他/她的口语词汇中了解单词的意思。相比之下，初学汉语的人不能“读出”单词：汉语单词的发音几乎没有线索，但由于书写系统代表了语素，因此就有了单词含义的线索，即使这个单词以前没有见过它的印刷形式。例如，“太阳”的语义词根也用于其他词汇的书面形式，如warm和evening，以及shine，所有与太阳有关的概念。我们有三个目的：1)我们将比较词形意识对儿童第一语言阅读理解的影响，比较英语和汉语第一语言学习者，即初级、中级和高级读者，以确定早期读写发展中关系的变化。对于英语，我们认为形态意识对高级年轻读者来说是最重要的，因为更复杂的文本有更多的多语素词。相反，我们认为汉字形态意识会从阅读的最早阶段就影响汉语母语阅读，因为书写系统代表着语素。2)通过比较词形意识对两组学生英语阅读理解的影响，试图确定词形意识对两组学生英语阅读理解的影响是语言普遍性的还是语言特异性的。如果词法意识是一种语言通则，那么它对香港华人群体初级读者的英语阅读理解应该有更重要的影响，因为他们在阅读发展的早期就适应了词法。如果这种影响是语言特异性的，那么词形意识对两组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文读者的英语阅读理解跟不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能力差距可能受到语言特异性词形意识的影响。通过这项工作产生的知识将影响阅读发展理论以及第一和第二语言学习者的教学方法。

项目成果

Morphological awareness and reading comprehension: a developmental study

形态意识和阅读理解：一项发展研究

• 发表时间: 2014
• 作者: James, E.

Morphological awareness in poor comprehenders: clues to the source of the difficulties

理解能力差的人的形态意识：困难根源的线索

• 发表时间: 2014
• 作者: James, E.

The relations between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in beginner readers to young adolescents

• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9817.12316
• 发表时间: 2020-07-03
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING
• 影响因子: 2.7
• 作者: James, Emma;Currie, Nicola K.;Cain, Kate
• 通讯作者: Cain, Kate

Morphological awareness in childhood and early adolescence: prediction of reading comprehension

童年和青春期早期的形态意识：阅读理解的预测

• 发表时间: 2017
• 作者: Cain, K

Understanding and teaching reading comprehenension

阅读理解的理解和教学

• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Oakhill, J