Reading strategy in Hong Kong school-aged children

Development of word- and character-level processing

Bibliographic Data

ID19502269
AuthorsMaggie Mun-Ki Chu, Man‐Tak Leung, Man-Tak Leung
Year2003
Volume8
Issue3
Pages185-192
Publication date2003-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsia Pacific Journal of Speech Language and Hearing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1361-3286 • E-ISSN: 2058-0967
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/136132803805576228
OpenAlexW2062071999
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited1

This study investigated the developmental trend of reading processing of Chinese two-character compound words in normal primary school-aged readers in Hong Kong. As the component characters of a Chinese multi-character compound word could be viewed as single morphemes, it was hypothesized that a compound word could be read as a meaningful whole, its component characters, or both. Previous studies (Zhang and Peng, 1992; Peng et al., 1999; etc.) showed that adults used both whole-word-level and character-level processing for reading Chinese multi-character words and there were interaction effects between word and component character frequencies. In the present study, subjects were asked to read aloud two-character words that were controlled for word and component character frequencies according to grades. The results suggested that word-level and component-character-level reading processing were developed in children as early as grade one. Lower graders tended to use the component-character-level reading processing when reading Chinese compound words, while higher graders tended to read words as whole units

Chinese characters · Compound · Linguistics · Morpheme · Word processing · Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills · Mathematics · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development · Writing and Handwriting Education

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