Journal of Educational Psychology · 2000 · 175 citations · 23 references
Language StudiesElementary EducationLinguisticsPhoneticsPhonological AwarenessPhonologyChild Language AcquisitionPhonological AcquisitionPhonological AnalysisPhonological DevelopmentPronunciation DevelopmentAge Effects On PronunciationChinese CharactersDevelopmental Phonological RepresentationEarly Phonological DevelopmentOrthographyPhonetic Errors
The study examined how Chinese elementary students develop phonetic awareness, the understanding of how character components indicate pronunciation. A total of 113 students from a Beijing elementary school were asked to produce the pronunciations of 60 semantic‑phonetic compound characters. Performance was strongly influenced by character familiarity and regularity, and even 2nd graders performed better on regular characters, with phonetic awareness improving across grades as shown by increasing regularity effects and more phonetic errors in older children.
This study investigated the development of phonetic awareness, meaning insight into the structure and function of the component of Chinese characters that gives a clue to pronunciation. Participants were 113 Chinese 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders enrolled in a working-class Beijing, China elementary school. The children's task was to represent the pronunciation of 60 semantic phonetic compound characters. As anticipated, both character familiarity and character regularity strongly influenced performance. Children as young as 2nd graders are better able to represent the pronunciation of regular characters than irregular characters or characters with bound phonetics. Phonetic awareness continues to develop over the elementary school years, as is shown by the increasing influence of phonetic regularity on the performance of children in higher grades and the increasing percentage of phonetic-related errors among older children.
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Learning to read: an unnatural act
Philip B. Gough, Michael L. Hillinger · Annals of Dyslexia · 1980 · 521 citations