Hs. Huang et Jr. Hanley, A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS, VISUAL SKILLS, AND CHINESE READING ACQUISITION AMONG FIRST-GRADERS IN TAIWAN, International journal of behavioral development, 20(2), 1997, pp. 249-268
The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether a child's ph
onological awareness and visual skills before instruction in school ha
d any predictive power for later Chinese reading ability among 1st-gra
ders in Taiwan. The study also examined the extent to which phonologic
al awareness and visual skills varied in three separate testing sessio
ns during the 1st grade. These testing sessions took place just before
the children had learned the alphabetic system Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, immedi
ately after the children had learnt Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, and, finally, at t
he end of the first year of schooling. Forty 6-year-old Chinese childr
en from Taiwan took part in the study. The test materials included a C
hinese Characters Reading Test, a set of Phonological Awareness tests,
a Visual Paired Associates learning test, and a vocabulary and IQ tes
t. Phonological awareness at the first testing session was found to be
significantly related to the ability to read Chinese characters at th
e end of the first year. However, the predictive power of early phonol
ogical awareness decreased markedly when the effects of preschool read
ing scores were partialled out. Therefore, the study provided evidence
that phonological processes are significantly related to success in t
he first year of Chinese reading, but was unable to establish whether
or not differences in phonological skills are a cause of differences i
n the reading ability of Chinese children. In addition 10 weeks of ins
truction in Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao led to an increase in performance on all te
sts of phonological awareness. This is consistent with the view that l
earning an alphabetic script improves phonological awareness ability.