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Metalinguistic contribution to reading comprehension: A comparison of Primary 3 students from China and Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2020

Sun Baoqi Open the ORCID record for Sun Baoqi [Opens in a new window] ,
Guangwei Hu Open the ORCID record for Guangwei Hu [Opens in a new window]  and
Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen Open the ORCID record for Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen [Opens in a new window]
Sun Baoqi*
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Guangwei Hu
Affiliation:
Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen
Affiliation:
Department of Education, University of Bath
*
*Corresponding author. Email: baoqi.sun@nie.edu.sg
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Abstract

This study examined the within- and cross-language metalinguistic contribution of three components of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness) to reading comprehension in monolingual Chinese-speaking children from Mainland China (n = 190) and English–Chinese bilingual children from Singapore (n = 390). Moreover, the effect of home language use on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading performance was investigated. For monolingual children, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after partialing out the effects of age, nonverbal intelligence, and oral vocabulary, syntactic awareness uniquely predicted 7%–13% of the variance in reading comprehension measures, whereas this relationship was not observed between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. For the bilingual children, within-language regression analyses revealed that English/Chinese morphological awareness and syntactic awareness both contributed significantly to English/Chinese reading measures over and above vocabulary and phonological awareness. Cross-linguistically, structure equation modeling results demonstrated that the bilingual children’s English and Chinese metalinguistic awareness were closely related and jointly supported reading comprehension in both languages, thus lending support to Koda’s transfer facilitation model. Furthermore, home language use was found to contribute to the bilingual children’s reading proficiency via its impact on metalinguistic awareness. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy and pedagogical implications that can be drawn from these findings.

Keywords

biliteracymetalinguistic awarenessmorphological awarenessreading comprehensionsyntactic awareness
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 657 - 684
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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