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Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children
Date Issued
2012
ISSN
0922-4777
1573-0905
Citation
Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Mar 2012, vol. 25(3), pp. 679-699.
Type
Peer Reviewed Journal Article
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.
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