A comparison of phonological awareness, lexical compounding, and homophone training for Chinese word reading in Hong Kong kindergartners

Purpose-We investigated the effects of three training programmes on Chinese reading development among Hong Kong kindergartners (age 6). Methods-The "phonological" group focused on phonological structures of Chinese words, the "compounding" group received training in analyzing the lexical compounding structures of words, and the "homophone" group was trained on homophone recognition across words. All groups received two 20-minute training sessions by classroom teachers with materials from experimenters each week for 6 weeks. Training focused on oral language skills only for the first three weeks and subsequently on combined oral and print skills. Compared with the control group, the phonological and homophone groups showed improved phonological skills. Results- The compounding awareness and homophone groups both improved in both morphological awareness and Chinese character reading skills. The homophone group also improved in vocabulary knowledge Conclusions-Results underscore the importance of morphological awareness for early reading skills in Chinese.