TY - JOUR
T1 - Development of phonological awareness in bilingual Chinese children
AU - Chen, Xi
AU - Ku, Yu Min
AU - Koyama, Emiko
AU - Anderson, Richard C.
AU - Li, Wenling
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We are pleased to acknowledge that the research described herein was supported by the Spencer Foundation. We wish to thank Yunmei Xu for her contributions to the data analysis.
PY - 2008/11
Y1 - 2008/11
N2 - This study investigated the phonological awareness of 219 first, second, and fourth grade Cantonese-speaking children from the south of China, who received immersion Mandarin instruction beginning in the first grade. Children received onset, rime and tone awareness tasks in Cantonese and Mandarin. Children performed better on the Cantonese onset awareness task in grade one, but the difference disappeared in higher grades. However, their performance on the rime and tone awareness tasks was better in Mandarin. These results reflect the phonological structure of the two languages: Mandarin has a more complex onset system, whereas Cantonese has more complex tone and rime systems. Moreover, children's phonological awareness increased faster in Mandarin, which likely resulted from Mandarin instruction. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that onset-rime awareness is a universal construct, whereas tone awareness is a language-specific construct.
AB - This study investigated the phonological awareness of 219 first, second, and fourth grade Cantonese-speaking children from the south of China, who received immersion Mandarin instruction beginning in the first grade. Children received onset, rime and tone awareness tasks in Cantonese and Mandarin. Children performed better on the Cantonese onset awareness task in grade one, but the difference disappeared in higher grades. However, their performance on the rime and tone awareness tasks was better in Mandarin. These results reflect the phonological structure of the two languages: Mandarin has a more complex onset system, whereas Cantonese has more complex tone and rime systems. Moreover, children's phonological awareness increased faster in Mandarin, which likely resulted from Mandarin instruction. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that onset-rime awareness is a universal construct, whereas tone awareness is a language-specific construct.
KW - Bilingual
KW - Cantonese
KW - Cross-language transfer
KW - Mandarin
KW - Phonological awareness
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U2 - 10.1007/s10936-008-9085-z
DO - 10.1007/s10936-008-9085-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 18953654
AN - SCOPUS:56749169172
SN - 0090-6905
VL - 37
SP - 405
EP - 418
JO - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
IS - 6
ER -