Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

Pui Man Pakey CHIK, Suk Han Connie HO, Pui Sze YEUNG, Wai Ock David CHAN, Kevin Kien Hoa CHUNG, Hui LUAN, Lap Yan LO, Suet Yee Wendy LAU

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

52 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children’s age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed. Copyright © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V..
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)679-699
JournalReading and Writing
Volume25
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2012

Citation

Chik, P. P.-M., Ho, C. S.-H., Yeung, P.-S., Chan, D. W.-O., Chung, K. K.-H., Luan, H., et al. (2012). Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children. Reading and Writing, 25(3), 679-699.

Keywords

  • Syntactic skills
  • Chinese
  • Reading comprehension

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