Rationale
Mandarin-English Bilingual Children’s
Use of Partial Information in Early
Chinese Reading
•
In all languages, print systems provide information about
the pronunciation of words (Perfetti et al., 1992).
•
Learning to read involves learning correspondence
between the written script and the spoken language
(Tzeng & Singer, 1981)
– The alphabetic principle in English (Ehri, 1991).
– Letters map onto phonemes
Fang-Ying Yang & Cynthia J. Johnson
Department of Speech and Hearing Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
•
2007 ASHA Convention, Boston, MA
Overview of Chinese Characters
Rationale (cont.)
•
Chinese is a logographic writing system.
•
•
•
The relationship between the Chinese writing
system and spoken language is rather opaque.
Better knowledge of the alphabetic principle predicts
better word recognition and reading ability (Siegel, 1993).
•
The basic units of written Chinese are characters.
One character usually represents one morpheme.
Three phonological elements in one character: onset
(initial consonant)+ rime (vowel and a final
consonant) + tone
Example:
• Onset: /p/
• Rime: /ao/
• Tone: 3
Overview of Chinese Characters (cont.)
Phonological Processing in Chinese Reading
•
80% of Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic
compounds (Shu et al., 2003).
•
Children can read unfamiliar characters
phonologically (Ho & Bryant, 1997; Siok & Flectcher,
2001; Ho et al., 1999).
•
A semantic-phonetic compound character = a semantic
radical (meaning)+ a phonetic radical (pronunciation)
•
Chinese children can use partial phonetic information
to read unfamiliar characters (Anderson et al., 2003).
– Depends on how the pronunciation of the phonetic
radical maps onto the pronunciation of the
compound character
[ma3]
•
Entire pronunciation; onset-rime; tone-rime
mother [ma1] female
Research Questions
•
Can Mandarin-English bilingual children use
phonetic information to read unfamiliar Chinese
characters?
•
Which phonetic information is used most often?
Method
•
Participants: 15 Taiwanese Mandarin-English
bilingual children in the U.S. (Mean age = 9; 2 )
•
Learn to read in the English-speaking class
•
Mandarin is the primary language at home
•
Receive Chinese reading/writing instruction
during weekends
Stimuli (cont.)
Stimuli
•
•
Type 1: Regular
Same: onset, rime and tone
Example: ancient [ku3] in
[ku3]
•
commentaries
Type 2: Onset-Rime-Same
Same: onset and rime
Different: tone
Example: wrap [pao1] in to satisfy [pao3]
•
Type 3: Tone-Rime-Same
Same: rime and tone
Different: onset
Example: sweet [kan1] in
merry from wine [xan1]
Type 4: Irregular
Same: none
Different: tone, onset, and rime
Example:
self [tɕi 3]
the wife of a prince [feɪ 1]
Results
Analysis 1: Whole character correct/ incorrect
Procedure
Experimental Tasks:
• Task 1: 28 phonetic radicals fast mapping
To ensure equal knowledge of phonetic radicals
•
One point was given to the item with all correct
phonological elements (i.e., onset, rime, and
tone).
Task 2: Children named the pronunciation of 28
compound character stimuli.
•
Type of character influenced performance on
pronunciation with a medium effect size, p
= .008, partial 2 = .613. (One way repeated
measures ANOVA, p < 0.05)
•
η
Results (cont.)
Analysis 1: Whole character correct/ incorrect
•
•
•
Overall correct percentage:
20%
Regular > Tone-RimeSame, p = 0.028
Regular > Irregular, p =
0.003
Correct Percentage of Each Type of Character
100.00
90.00
80.00
70.00
60.00
50.00
40.00
30.00
20.00
10.00
0.00
p < 0.05
14.00
16.00
•
•
Regular > Irregular, p =
0.021
Onset-Rime-Same >
Irregular, p = 0.01
Tone-Rime-Same >
Irregular, p = 0.001
Partial scoring system: 0.33 points were given to
every correct phonological element (i.e., onset, rime,
and tone).
Onset-Rime- Tone-Rime-
•
Type of character still influenced performance on
pronunciation with a medium effect size, p = .003,
partial 2 = .678. (One way repeated measures
ANOVA, p < 0.05)
11.00
Irregular
Same
Results (cont.)
Analysis 2: Partial Credit Scoring
•
•
39.00
Same
Overall correct
percentage: 44%
– Higher than analysis
1 (20%)
Analysis 2: To further examine which partial
information was used most often
p < 0.05
Regular
•
Results
Analysis 2: Partial Credit Scoring
η
Results -- Partial Information Used by Children
Correct Percentage of Each Type of Character -Partial Credit Scoring
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
p < 0.05
p < 0.05
p < 0.05
50.63
49.52
48.57
27.78
Regular
Onset-RimeSame
Tone
Tone-RimeSame
Irregular
Onset
Rime
Regular
OnsetRimeSame
ToneRimeSame
Irregular Mean
(when
PE was
available)
51%
30%
65%
46%
58%
49%
54%
21%
21%
51.5%
51%
64%
60%
15%
58.3%
Conclusion (cont.)
Conclusion
•
Partially confirm Anderson et al.’s (2003)
results that children can use partial
information to read unfamiliar Chinese
characters.
Present Study:
Use of low frequency characters; no pre-exposure to
character stimuli pronunciation
•
Overall correct percentage is slightly lower than
monolingual Chinese-speaking children
(Anderson et al., 2003).
Partial credit shows even greater use of phonetic
resources, even for novice learners in very challenging
circumstances.
– 29% vs. 20%
Conclusion (cont.)
At the early stage of acquiring Chinese print,
Mandarin-English bilingual children can use
partial phonetic information to read unfamiliar
characters.
As English-first readers, most bilingual children
know to look at the phonetic radical to derive
phonetic information about target characters.
Learning to read two different writing systems does not
reduce their sensitivity to the orthographic structure of
Chinese.
Lower proficiency level in Chinese reading
Implication
•
Explicit instruction of the logic of Chinese
character structure might relieve the burden of
learning a print system of unreliable print-sound
correspondence.
Acknowledgement
Thank you!
Email: [email protected]
Reference
Anderson, R. C., Li, W., Ku, Y., Shu, H., & Wu, N. (2003). Use of partial information in reading Chinese
characters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 52-57.
Ehri, L. (1991). Development of the ability to read words. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. Pearson (Eds.),
Handbook of reading research Volume II (pp. 383-417). New York: Longman.
Ho, C. S.- H., & Bryant, P.(1997). Learning to read Chinese beyond the logographic phase. Reading Research
Quarterly, 32, 276-289.
Perfetti, C. A., Zhang, S., & Berant, I. (1992) Reading in English and Chinese: Evidence for a “universal”
phonological principle. In R. Frost & J. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning
(pp. 227-248). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Siegel, L. S. (1993). Phonological processing deficits as the basis of a reading disability. Developmental Review,
13, 246-257.
Siok, W. T. & Fletcher, P. (2001). The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese
reading acquisition. Developmental Psychology, 37, 886-899.
Shu, H., Anderson, R. C., & Wu, N. (2000). Phonetic awareness: Knowledge of orthography-phonology
relationships in the character acquisition of Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 5662.
Shu, H. , Chen, X., Anderson, R. C., Wu, N., & Xuan, Y. (2003b). Properties of school Chinese: Implications for
learning to read. Child Development, 74, 27-47.
Tzeng, O.J.L. & Singer, H. (1981). Perception of print: Reading research in experimental psychology. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
We sincerely thank the children and families for their
encouragement and participation in this study.
We would like to express our gratitude to the Champaign
Chinese Heritage School and the Ann Arbor Chinese Center of
Michigan for their assistance in recruiting participants.
We also sincerely appreciate Dr. Laura DeThorne and Dr.
Elizabeth Stine-Morrow for invaluable feedback.
This study was supported by the 2007 Beckman Institute
Cognitive Science/Artificial Intelligence Award.
We also appreciate the Cultural Division of Taipei Economic
and Cultural Offices for travel funding to the 2007 ASHA
convention.