ERIC Number: EJ1053455
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Apr
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0922-4777
EISSN: N/A
The Developmental Trend of Orthographic Awareness in Chinese Preschoolers
Qian, Yi; Song, Yao-Wu; Zhao, Jing; Bi, Hong-Yan
Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, v28 n4 p571-586 Apr 2015
The present study explored the developmental trend of orthographic awareness in Chinese-speaking preschoolers. A total of 184 children between 3 and 5 years of age participated in the study. Two developmental patterns of orthographic awareness were obtained. One pattern was dependent on a traditional Chinese orthographic hierarchy, with a sequence of writing system specificity, radical, whole character, radical combination rules, and stroke. Three-year-olds fully understood the writing-system-specific features of Chinese characters, and could distinguish characters from alphabetic scripts and drawings; the average accuracy was >80%. Five-year-olds were able to distinguish radicals from numbers, as well as regard non-characters with rotated radicals and missing radicals as illegal; the average accuracy was 87%. At 5 years of age, children could detect whole character rotated non-characters with an average accuracy of 78%, but were not proficient in identifying non-characters with absent strokes (the average accuracy was 69%). The 5-year-old children did not know well about radical combination rules; the average accuracy was 67%. The other pattern was associated with violation means of non-characters, which could be characterized as progressing from form types, to spatial formats, and finally to combination conventions. Children grasped legal form types of scripts (Chinese characters and radicals) at 3 years of age, with an average accuracy approaching 80%. Five-year-old children detected illegal spatial characteristics of characters, such as up-down reversal, with an average accuracy of 78%. However, children were unable to understand radical combination conventions even at 5 years of age; average accuracy was 67%.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Preschool Children, Preschool Education, Orthographic Symbols, Chinese, Psycholinguistics, Language Acquisition, Language Proficiency, Accuracy, Alphabets, Reading Processes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Preschool Education; Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A