How do different types of morphological awareness in Chinese and English contribute to English reading for Chinese adolescents?

Yaqi ShenCurriculum and Instruction

Why this topic matters?

• As China Daily reported 300 million Chinese are learning English as foreign language (EFL) in mainland China, however, many Chinese EFL students encounter difficulty in reading comprehension in the high-stake exam (Yang & Qian, 2017).

• English is the mandatory course from primary school. English accounts for 150 scores for 750 total scores for high school entrance examination and college entrance examination. English accounts for 100 scores for 500 scores total for master’s entrance examination.

• English reading comprehension is crucial for students’ academic development and success. A critical part of reading is morphological awareness.

Morphological awareness

Morphological awareness refers to “children’s

consciousness of the morphemic structure of words and their ability to reflect on

and manipulate the structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p.194).

For example, the word “wonderful” is formed by the word “wonder” and the suffix

“ful”.

Morphology

• English is an alphabetic language that employs derivational morphology as a productive way of word-formation (e.g., success-successful). • In contrast, Chinese is a morpho-syllabic language that is rich in

compounding [e.g., �(book)+�(store)=��(bookstore)].

Current Literature

• Zhang and colleagues (2014) showed that derivational awareness--which is more productive in English explained more variance in reading comprehension than compounding, however, Wang et al. (2006) showed compounding--which is less productive structure in English explained more variances in reading comprehension.

• There is evidence of a relationship between Chinese compounding and English reading comprehension for elementary level Chinese-English bilingual children (Hu, 2012; Zhang, 2010; Zhang & Koda, 2014), but they do not find Chinese derivational awareness play a role on English reading comprehension.

My purpose

My goal here is to understand how compounding and derivational awarenss in each language contributes to English reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge.

Research questions

• What is the relationship between Chinese and English derivational awareness concurrently and longitudinally? What is the relationship between Chinese and English compound awareness concurrently and longitudinally?

• How do different aspects of morphological awareness in English and Chinese contribute to English vocabulary knowledge? Do the unique variances of each type of morphological awareness in English and Chinese explain vocabulary knowledge change from Time 1 to Time 2?

• How do different aspects of morphological awareness in English and Chinese contribute to English reading comprehension (Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test)? Do the unique variances of each type of morphological awareness in English and Chinese explain reading comprehension change from Time 1 to Time 2?

Method

• Participants: • Participants are 49 eighth grade Chinese students

who are learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in China.

• Data collection: • 2 time points: 2019.12, 2020.6

• Measurements: • Experimental assessments of derivational and

compound morphology in both Chinese and English and a standardized English vocabulary and reading comprehension assessment were administered.

• Data analysis:• Hierarchical regression analysis

Findings

The moderate correlation found for compound across languages(r=.322 at T1, and r=.371 at T2), and extends evidence from prior studies from young children (Lin et al., 2017; Tong et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2006) to adolescents.

English derivational awareness--which is more productive in English- is the only significant predictor for English reading comprehension, it explains 10.498% unique variances on reading comprehension at T2. It aligns with some previous studies, and it provides new evidence that derivational is more important structure for reading comprehension.

English compound awareness—which is salient structure in Chinese – is a only significant predictor for English vocabulary knowledge, it explains 11.357% unique variances on vocabulary knowledge at T2.It aligns with some previous studies conducted on ELLs, and it provides new evidence on EFLs of how first language(L1) morphological structure could have a effect on the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge.

Thank you!