Pinyin and Chinese Children's Phonological Awareness
Pinyin and Chinese Children’s Phonological Awareness by Xintian Du A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute of Studies in Education University of Toronto @Copyright by Xintian Du 2010 ABSTRACT Pinyin and Chinese Children’s Phonological Awareness Master of Arts 2010 Xintian Du Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning University of Toronto This paper critically reviewed the literature on the relationships between Pinyin and Chinese bilingual and monolingual children’s phonological awareness (PA) and identified areas of research worth of further investigation. As the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet providing pronunciation of the universal Chinese characters, Pinyin facilitates children’s early reading development. What research has found in English is that PA is a reliable indicator of later reading success and meta-linguistic training improves PA. In Chinese, a non-alphabetic language, there is also evidence that PA predicts reading in Chinese, which confirms the universality of PA’s role. However, research shows the uniqueness of each language: tonal awareness is stronger indicator in Chinese while phonemic awareness is stronger indicator in English. Moreover, Pinyin, the meta-linguistic training, has been found to improve PA in Chinese and reading in Chinese and possibly facilitate the cross-language transfer of PA from Chinese to English and vice versa. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am heartily thankful to my supervisors Becky Chen and Normand Labrie, whose guidance and support from the initial to the final level enabled me to develop a thorough understanding of the subject and eventually complete the thesis paper.
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