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Transfer facilitation effects of morphological awareness on multicharacter word reading in Chinese as a foreign language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2021

Sihui (Echo) Ke Open the ORCID record for Sihui (Echo) Ke [Opens in a new window]  and
Keiko Koda
Sihui (Echo) Ke*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures, 1055 Patterson Office Tower, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY40506, USA
Keiko Koda
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, 341 Posner Hall, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA15213, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Emails: echoecho.ke@gmail.com or sihui.ke@uky.edu
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Abstract

This study examined the transfer facilitation effects from English morphological awareness on Chinese multicharacter word reading in English-speaking adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Fifty English-speaking American university CFL learners participated in our study who measured their English morphological awareness, Chinese morphological awareness, Chinese linguistic knowledge, Chinese word reading, and working memory. There were three major findings: (1) with approximately three years of formal Chinese instruction and limited Chinese print input, English-speaking adult learners of Chinese developed sensitivity to the internal morphological structure of multicharacter words in Chinese. (2) English morphological awareness did not directly contribute to Chinese bimorphemic three-character pseudoword reading yet contributed indirectly via the joint serial mediation by Chinese morphological awareness and Chinese monomorphemic two-character real word reading. (3) There was no additional influence from Chinese linguistic knowledge on Chinese word reading. And, English morphological awareness explained about 3.64% of the variance in second language Chinese bimorphemic three-character pseudoword reading. Discussion is provided regarding the transfer facilitation mechanism through which first language morphological awareness contributes to adult second language reading acquisition.

Keywords

transfermorphological awarenessadult second language readingChinese
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , September 2021 , pp. 1263 - 1286
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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