Early Literacy Development in Mandarin-Speaking Children: The Role of Phonological Awareness, Rapid Naming and Spoken Language Skills Li-Li Yeh Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the regulation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Human Communication Sciences University of Sheffield April, 2012 Abstract In Taiwan, many children grow up in a bilingual environment, namely Mandarin and Taiwanese. They learn Zhuyin Fuhao – a semi-syllabic transparent orthography – at the beginning of the first grade before learning traditional Chinese characters. However little is known about the acquisition of literacy in this complex context, especially about the role of phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN) and other spoken language skills. This longitudinal study is the first systematic attempt to investigate the trajectory of literacy acquisition in Mandarin-speaking children and the impact of instruction in both Zhuyin Fuhao and character. The study was carried out in Taipei. A sample of 92 children were tested in their first grade (mean age of 6;7), and then followed up a year later in their second grade. A comprehensive PA battery was designed to measure implicit and explicit PA of syllables, onset-rime, phonemes and tones. RAN, spoken language skills and literacy skills, including reading accuracy and comprehension in Zhuyin Fuhao and character were also measured, alongside non-verbal intelligence and children’s home languages. It was found that the role of PA in early literacy development of Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan varies as a function of the orthography system. PA was closely linked to ZF-related tasks and reading comprehension, but not character reading where it had no predictive role. On the other hand, graphological RAN was found to be a good predictor of reading performance in both scripts, both concurrently and longitudinally. Additionally, non-graphological RAN had a role in predicting lexical-related literacy skills. Lastly, all spoken language skills, except semantic fluency, were significantly associated with reading comprehension indicating that oral language competence contributes major variances in reading comprehension. Moreover, vocabulary and auditory memory were associated longitudinally with many CH-related tasks. However, the variance of ZF word reading or spelling could not be II explained by any spoken language skills. Investigation of children with atypical development revealed that children with reading difficulties performed less well on RAN and PA tasks while children with speech difficulty performed less well on sub-syllabic PA, Zhuyin Fuhao literacy tasks and character recognition, but no differently to their peers on RAN and character reading accuracy and character knowledge in radical form or position. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed. III Acknowledgements I am very fortunate to have three excellent supervisors: Prof. Joy Stackhouse, Prof. Bill Wells and Dr Marcin Szczerbiński, who gave me their advice and encouragement throughout the preparation of this study and thesis. They not only inspired me by new perspectives on interpreting data but also humbled me by their depth of knowledge. I would not have completed this thesis without their support full of wisdom and warmth. My sincere gratitude goes to the children, parents and teachers participating in the study. Thank you for your trust and warmth every time we met. Special thanks go to Mr. Chin-Fu Hsu and Ms. Shiao-Yu Liao, of the S primary school: without your selfless support I would not have been able to start collecting my data. I also appreciate having a pleasant group of research helpers. It was a tough job and we did it together. Thank you so much for all the effort and the early working hours. I would like to thank Prof. Joyce Chi and Dr Sheng-Yu Fan in Taiwan for patiently giving me precious feedback on my draft. I am also grateful to have Dr Yen-Ling Chan and Dr Chia-Yin Lee’s help in providing me with useful facilities and literature. All the colleagues I know in the Department of Human Communication Sciences have been a source of happiness for me during nearly four years in Sheffield. Thank you for the valuable company and friendship, particularly Sarah Spencer, Blanca Schaefer, Celia Hsu, and Chlöe Bate. Special thanks to my siblings, particularly Leechu and Jane, and their children and daughter in law. You always offer help whenever I call. I am lucky to have you standing by me. To my husband, Pei-Tai, who has shared all the joy and worry throughout this journey with me and has dedicated his precious leisure time to designing all the IT programs of the study, I cannot thank you enough. Lastly, I would like to dedicate the thesis to my eighty-two-year-old mother, who first taught me rhymes and poems in Taiwanese and/or Japanese: I still remember and treasure them as you do. IV Table of Contents Abstract II Acknowledgements IV Table of Contents V List of Tables VIII List of Figures XI List of Abbreviation XII Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Literature Review 7 1.1 Languages, Orthography and Literacy Acquisition in Taiwan 7 1.1.1 Spoken Languages 7 1.1.1.1 Mandarin Phonology 7 1.1.1.2 Bilingual Environment in Taiwan 13 1.1.2 Orthography systems in Taiwan 16 1.1.2.1 Chinese Characters: A Morpho-syllabic System 17 1.1.2.2 Zhuyin Fuhao: A Semi-syllabic System 19 1.1.3 Literacy Acquisition in Chinese 22 1.1.3.1 Literacy Instruction: Teaching ZF before Chinese Characters 23 1.1.3.2 The Acquisition of Chinese Characters 26 1.2 Phonological Awareness and its Relationship to Language 31 1.2.1 Phonological Awareness Development 39 1.2.2 The Importance of Phonological Awareness in Literacy Acquisition 43 1.3 Rapid Automatized Naming in Reading Acquisition 50 1.4 Spoken Language Skills in Reading Acquisition 60 1.5 Toward a Model of Reading Development in Taiwan 63 1.6 Research Topics 67 Chapter 2 Methodology 69 2.1 Research Design 69 2.2 Participants 70 2.3 Measures 75 2.3.1 Non-verbal Intelligence 79 2.3.2 Speech and/or Language Measures 80 2.3.3 Phonological Awareness 83 2.3.4 Literacy Measures 88 2.3.5 Rapid Automatized Naming 94 V 2.4 Procedures 96 2.4.1 Group Study in Year 1 96 2.4.2 Group Study in Year 2 98 2.4.3 Coding Explicit PA performance 99 2.5 Summary 100 Chapter 3 Results and Discussion I: Development of Phonological Awareness and Its Relationship with Spoken Language Skills 101 3.1 Development of PA between Year 1 and Year 2 101 3.1.1 The Mastery of PA Tasks in Year 1 and Year 2 101 3.1.2 The Relationship between Tasks in the PA Battery 109 3.2 The Relationship between PA and Spoken Language Skills 114 3.2.1 Spoken Language Skills 115 3.2.2 The Correlations between PA and Spoken Language Skills 118 3.3 Discussion of Results 121 3.3.1 Development of Segmental Phonological Awareness 121 3.3.2 Development of Supra-segmental Phonological Awareness 125 3.3.3 Relationships between PA and Spoken Language Skills 126 3.4 Conclusion 127 Chapter 4 Results and Discussion II: Development of Literacy and Rapid Automatized Naming 128 4.1 Development of Literacy 128 4.1.1 Performance on Literacy Measures: Year 1 128 4.1.2 Performance on Literacy Measures: Year 2 133 4.1.3 The Impact of Background Factors on Literacy Measures 137 4.2 Development of Rapid Automatized Naming 139 4.2.1 Descriptive Statistics of RAN: Year 1 139 4.2.2 Descriptive Statistics of RAN: Year 2 140 4.3 The Correlations among Literacy Measures 142 4.4 The Relationships among RAN Tasks 146 4.5 Discussion 146 4.5.1 Development of Ability to Read ZF and CH 147 4.5.2 Variable Performance among Rapid Automatized Naming Tasks 149 4.6 Summary 151 Chapter 5 Results and Discussion III: The Predictors of PA and Literacy Acquisition 152 VI 5.1 Correlations of All Measures in the Study 152 5.2 Multiple Regression Analyses of Prediction of Literacy 155 5.3 Multiple Regression Analysis of Prediction of Phonological Awareness 172 5.4 Discussion 179 5.4.1 Predicting Literacy Acquisition 180 5.4.2 Predicting PA Development after Formal Education Starts 186 5.5 Conclusions 187 Chapter 6 Results and Discussion IV: Literacy, PA, RAN and Spoken Language in Typically and Atypically Developing Children 189 6.1 Study 1: Comparison between Children With and Without Speech Difficulty 190 6.1.1 Methodology 191 6.1.2 Results 192 6.1.3 Discussion 195 6.2 Study 2: Comparisons between Atypical and Average Readers 196 6.2.1 Methodology 196 6.2.2 Results 197 6.2.3 Discussion 203 6.3 Conclusions 204 Chapter 7 General Discussion and Conclusion 205 7.1 General Discussion 205 7.1.1 Literacy Development in Two Orthographic Systems 205 7.1.2 Relationships between PA development and Literacy Acquisition 207 7.1.3 Relationships between RAN and Literacy Acquisition 211 7.1.4 Relationships between Spoken Language Skills and Literacy Acquisition 213 7.2 What this Study Contributes 217 7.3 Recommendations for Further Studies 218 7.4 Practical Implications 220 7.5 Further Directions 222 7.6 Conclusion 223 References 225 Appendices 241 VII List of Tables Table 1.1 Consonants in Mandarin 11 Table 1.2 IPA List for Zhuyin-Fuhao 21 Table 1.3 The scripts of ZF and pinyin for ‘the phonetic system of Han language’ 25 Table 1.4 Concurrent correlations between PA and Chinese character recognition at five time points 46 Table 2.1 Parental consent rate in Year 1 and Year 2 71 Table 2.2 Participants’ family income per month compared to families in Taiwan 73 Table 2.3 Educational level of parents 73 Table 2.4 Nationality of parents 74 Table