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准确地从文本中吸收信息的能力。一个独立而成功的读者必须发展足够的文字阅读和阅读理解能力。我们的重点是推进对阅读理解发展的认识，这是大多数阅读的目标。我们的研究将建立在词素理解（形态意识）与儿童阅读理解水平相关的证据基础上。词素是（口语）单词中最小的意义单位，例如，“un”是一个词素，当加到一个基本词上时表示“不”，如在“unhappy”中。词素的理解对于理解复杂的多词素英语单词，如“unhappy”，“happier”，“unhappiness”以及它们之间的关系至关重要。本研究旨在通过比较两组阅读者：英语儿童和香港华人儿童，进一步了解形态意识和阅读理解之间的关系。研究这两组年轻读者的原因是英语和汉语书写系统对词素的强调不同。英语书写系统代表语言的发音，而汉语书写系统代表词素。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。通常情况下，年轻的读者往往知道的意思，他们没有见过的话，在他们的印刷形式。通过读出单词，年轻的读者可以在他/她的口语词典中获得单词的含义。相比之下，初学中文的读者不能“读出”单词：几乎没有关于中文单词发音的线索，但是因为书写系统代表了词素，所以有关于单词含义的线索，即使实际单词以前没有见过印刷形式。例如，太阳的语义词根也用于其他词的书面形式，如温暖和傍晚，以及阳光，所有与太阳有关的概念。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，比较英语和汉语第一语言学习者，他们是初级、中级和高级读者，以确定早期识字发展中的关系变化。对于英语，我们建议，形态意识将是最重要的先进的年轻读者，因为更复杂的文本有更多的多词素词。与此相反，我们认为，汉语的形态意识会影响中国第一语言阅读从最早的阶段，阅读，因为写作系统代表语素。2)通过比较形态意识对两组学生英语阅读理解的影响，我们试图确定形态意识的影响是普遍的还是特定的。如果形态意识是普遍的语言意识，它应该有一个更重要的影响，对初学者的英语阅读理解的香港华人组，因为他们是适应形态早期的阅读发展。如果这种影响是语言特异性的，那么形态意识对两组学生的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能力与他们的英语单词阅读能力不同步。我们期望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有的形态意识的影响。通过这项工作产生的知识将影响阅读发展理论和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.