Stages in Chinese Children's Reading of English Words

Developmental stages in reading English words were examined among 118 Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 from a working-class elementary school in Tianjin, China. Proficiency in Chinese and English, ability to make orthographic analogies in both languages, and strategies in reading English words were assessed. Results suggest that Chinese children follow stages in alphabetic reading development similar to those of native English-speaking children: the prealphabetic stage, the partial alphabetic stage, and the full alphabetic stage. The use of orthographic analogy does not form a separate stage independent of the alphabetic decoding stages; rather, it is a concurrent option available to Chinese children from an early age. Children more readily made onset-vowel analogies than vowel-coda analogies.