Pinyin Knowledge Research Articles

Intergenerational Effects on Children’s Reading Comprehension in Chinese: Evidence from a 3-Year Longitudinal Study

ABSTRACT Purpose We examined whether the relations between home literacy environment (HLE), children’s independent reading, and emergent literacy and reading skills are confounded by parents’ reading skills (a genetic proxy). Method One hundred eighty-nine Chinese children (M age = 74.26 months, 40% female) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 2 and were assessed on emergent literacy skills (pinyin knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) and word reading in kindergarten and on reading comprehension in Grade 2. Their parents (both mothers and fathers) were also assessed on reading (word reading and reading comprehension) and completed questionnaires on HLE (code-related activities, meaning-related activities, and access to literacy resources) in kindergarten and their children’s independent reading in Grade 2. Results Results of structural equation modeling showed that access to literacy resources was associated with children’s vocabulary, and code-related activities indirectly predicted reading comprehension through pinyin knowledge after controlling for parents’ reading skills. Parents’ reading skills indirectly predicted children’s reading comprehension through children’s independent reading. Conclusion Code-related activities and access to literacy resources may have a true effect on children’s reading development over and above the effect of parents’ reading skills as a proxy for genetic transmission. The children of parents with better reading skills may engage in more independent reading, which may be related to their better reading comprehension.

How Chinese Learners Decode L2 English Words: Evidence from a Phonics Instruction Program

AbstractThe teaching of L2 phonics, defined here as explicit instruction in the symbol‐sound correspondences of a second or foreign language, has been enjoying growing popularity in recent years. This is associated with the reemphasis of phonological decoding in different aspects of L2 learning, and learners' difficulty in developing L2 decoding proficiency. However, there has been limited research on L2 phonics instruction, particularly qualitative evidence exploring the nature of learners' decoding errors. For Chinese EFL learners, past studies often stress the negative impact of their morphemic L1 on decoding English words. In contrast, the potential influence of Pinyin knowledge (an alphabetic system for transcribing the spoken Chinese language) has often been overlooked, despite constituting an important aspect of their literacy. This study reports the effects of an English phonics instruction program, conducted with Chinese university EFL learners, on different categories of English graphemes, classified according to (a) whether they are present or absent in Pinyin, and (b) if present, whether their pronunciations are similar or different across Pinyin and English. In a quasi‐experimental design, a group of first‐year English majors (n = 71) received 12 weeks of English phonics instruction, while a comparison group (n = 67) received 12 weeks of English phonology instruction without phonics. The results show that the phonics group made significantly more progress in decoding some graphemes, especially Pinyin‐absent graphemes. Qualitative analysis of participants' decoding identifies three types of common errors in decoding, with the impact of Pinyin being highlighted. Implications for the design of L2 phonics instruction programs are drawn.

Using diagnostic feedback to enhance the development of phonetic knowledge of an L2: a CALL design based on the unified competition model and the implementation with the Pinyin Tutor

Second language acquisition (SLA) is complex and multidimensional. Using the framework of the unified competition model (UCM), the current study explores how robust learning and testing of Chinese Pinyin are fostered by optimal integration of different kinds of feedback in an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment offered by the Pinyin Tutor at TalkBank. The findings demonstrated that the repeated feedback-embedded training with the Pinyin Tutor significantly boosted the learners’ proficiency in all aspects of Pinyin knowledge for second language (L2) learners of Chinese whose first language (L1) backgrounds were varied and whose initial proficiencies in Chinese were elementary. Furthermore, there was a strong increase in Pinyin knowledge, as evidenced in the delayed posttest administered 3 months after finishing the training sessions. The results further showed that diagnostic feedback led to greater improvement than basic feedback. The significance of the results is attributed to the design of the Pinyin Tutor, which implements principles from psycholinguistic theory as well as corpus data on the speech production by L2 learners. The study sheds fresh light on improving the Pinyin Tutor, and CALL in general, by incorporating up-to-date findings in educational psychology.

Unpacking the Effects of Parents on Their Children’s Emergent Literacy Skills and Word Reading: Evidence from Urban and Rural Settings in China

ABSTRACT Purpose We examined the role of distal (parents’ education, family’s income, parents’ expectations, and parents’ attitudes to the home teaching of literacy) and proximal (formal and informal home literacy environment, access to literacy resources, and extracurricular activities) parental factors in children’s early literacy skills and whether the relations vary across affluent and disadvantaged societies in China. Method Five hundred fifty-three third-year kindergarten Chinese children (M age = 74.59 months) were recruited from Jining, Luqiao, and Mapo and were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, vocabulary, pinyin knowledge, and word reading. Their parents filled out a questionnaire on their education and income as well as on the frequency of engaging in different home literacy activities, their expectations and attitudes to the home teaching of literacy, and their children’s extracurricular activities. Results Results of multigroup analyses and mediation analyses revealed both direct and indirect effects of both distal and proximal parental factors on emergent literacy skills and word reading. In addition, the models were strikingly similar across the two settings. Conclusion The findings suggest that the pathways of differential influences from parental factors to children’s early literacy skills may be similar across socioeconomic contexts.

The role of novelty stimuli in second language acquisition: evidence from the optimized training by the Pinyin Tutor at TalkBank

As hypothesized by the unified competition model (MacWhinney, 2007, 2017, 2021), optimizing training schemes can enhance second language (L2) learning by fostering various protective factors. Under such a framework, the current study focuses on how the familiarity of stimuli will affect learning Chinese phonetic skills in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment. Two training conditions, i.e., training with familiar stimuli from the textbook and unfamiliar stimuli from novelty design, were administered for two groups of learners at American universities, where the classroom instructions were integrated with the Pinyin Tutor—an online spoken Chinese learning platform hosted under TalkBank. The results show that training with novelty stimuli leads to a greater pretest–posttest improvement for intermediate learners, whereas more significant improvement has been observed in training with familiar stimuli among beginning learners. The learning-enhancing power of the Pinyin Tutor is evidenced by the overall significance of the pretest–posttest improvement when consolidating the results of the two conditions. Furthermore, high retention has been demonstrated in all six aspects of the Pinyin knowledge as tested by a three-month-after delayed posttest. These findings tend to endorse a differentiated design of instructional materials with increasing novelty components as the level of L2 learning advances. The overall significant learning-boosting results accredit the design of the Pinyin Tutor, where the technological architecture and algorithms were integrated with psycholinguistic and pedagogical theories. Suggestions and implications for smart learning in general are presented.

Chinese character recognition and literacy development via a techno-pedagogical pivot

This study investigates the effect of sequenced, time-delayed, multimodal Chinese language and communicative literacy supports on the ability of learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language [CFL] to recognize characters and acquire literacy via writing in Chinese. A multimodal web application was designed and developed as a writing platform and supplementary teaching tool—leveraging second language [L2] spoken Chinese understanding and pinyin spelling knowledge to overcome the well documented difficulties faced by CFL students when learning and communicating via Chinese characters. We observed and recorded a communicative writing task carried out on the platform by 14 CFL students and interviewed them upon task completion—also interviewing their instructors. Our findings suggest that designing from a perspective that is pedagogically unique for CFL classrooms afforded new types of interactions and literacy development patterns. Specifically, timed, sequenced, multimodal scaffolds anchored to students’ L2 spoken Chinese understanding and pinyin knowledge supported Chinese character recognition, production, and acquisition within communication and expression-centered tasks.

The development of phonological awareness and Pinyin knowledge in Mandarin-speaking school-aged children

Purpose The writing of Chinese is non-alphabetic, but children in China learn Pinyin, a Romanised alphabetic system, to facilitate literacy development. This research investigates how Mandarin phonological awareness (PA) develops, and how it interacts with Pinyin in school-aged Mandarin-speaking children in China. Method In Beijing, 182 students in grades two through four (ages ranged between 91 and 135 months) were tested for PA (syllable manipulation and onset-rime oddity tasks) and Pinyin knowledge (Pinyin symbol naming and syllable reading tasks). ANOVAs were used to examine their developmental trajectories. Partial correlations and linear regressions were used to examine the relationships between PA and Pinyin knowledge. Result Syllable awareness has already reached the ceiling level by grade two, while onset-rime awareness is still developing across grades. The ability to name Pinyin symbols decreases over time, while the ability to read syllables written in Pinyin stays invariant across grades. PA and Pinyin knowledge are significantly correlated, and the results of linear regression indicated that the relationship between PA and Pinyin syllable reading is bi-directional. Conclusion This study suggests that Mandarin PA development shows features characteristic of a non-alphabetic language with Pinyin knowledge playing a crucial role. Implications for theory and practice of Mandarin-speaking children’s literacy development are discussed.

Do pinyin and character recognition help each other grow?

Although previous studies have shown that early pinyin knowledge predicts future character recognition, it remains unclear if early character recognition also predicts future pinyin knowledge. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the cross-lagged relations between pinyin knowledge and character recognition and whether their relation is mediated by phonological awareness. One hundred fifty-nine third year kindergarten children (70 girls, 89 boys; Mage = 72.70 months) from Jining, China, were followed from the end of kindergarten to the beginning of Grade 1 and were tested twice on pinyin knowledge, phonological awareness, and character recognition. Results of cross-lagged analysis showed first that pinyin knowledge and character recognition had a reciprocal relationship. Second, phonological awareness did not mediate the effects of pinyin knowledge on character recognition. These findings suggest that pinyin knowledge and character recognition have a reciprocal relation that takes place well before children are formally introduced to either script.

Untangling Chinese preschoolers’ early writing development: associations among early reading, executive functioning, and early writing skills

Despite a growing body of literature in English-speaking contexts documenting associations among children’s early reading, executive function (EF), and early writing development, relatively few studies investigate the development of these skills in young Chinese children. Utilizing a longitudinal research design, this study followed 84 Chinese children (M = 4.16 years, SD = 0.67) over the preschool year and investigated concurrent and longitudinal associations among young children’s early reading (i.e. vocabulary, phonological awareness, and Pinyin knowledge), early writing (i.e. name writing and Chinese word writing), and EF skills (i.e. inhibitory control, behavioral regulation, and cognitive flexibility). Hierarchical regression and multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that Pinyin knowledge was concurrently and longitudinally associated with Chinese children’s name writing and word writing skills. Reciprocal associations between Pinyin and Chinese name writing was also detected. Among EF skills, inhibitory control was concurrently associated with Chinese name writing skill, while cognitive flexibility was longitudinally associated with Chinese name writing. Findings suggest an important role of Pinyin knowledge in Chinese children’s early writing development and point to the importance of examining the contribution of domain specific EF skills to Chinese early reading and writing development.

How does home literacy environment influence reading comprehension in Chinese? Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study

Although several studies have examined the role of home literacy environment (HLE) in learning to read in Western societies, little is known about the role of HLE in Chinese reading. In addition, the few studies in Chinese have not tested the possible effects of HLE on reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect effects of different aspects of HLE (formal literacy experiences, informal literacy experiences, and access to literacy resources) on reading comprehension in Chinese. One hundred fifty-nine third year kindergarten children (70 girls and 89 boys; Mage = 72.62 months) participated in the study. In kindergarten, they were assessed on emergent literacy skills (vocabulary, phonological awareness, pinyin knowledge, rapid naming), in Grade 1, on word reading, and, in Grade 2, on reading comprehension. In addition, parents filled out a questionnaire on their education and income, the frequency of different HLE activities, the number of children’s books at home, and their expectations, when their children were in kindergarten. Results of structural equation modeling showed that formal literacy experiences predicted reading comprehension through the effects of pinyin knowledge on word reading. Access to literacy resources predicted reading comprehension through the effects of rapid naming, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Finally, informal literacy experiences did not predict any of the emergent literacy skills or reading outcomes. Our findings provide only partial support of the home literacy model and suggest that the culture in which environmental effects take place may determine what aspects of the home literacy environment contribute to children’s reading performance and what not.

Learning to read in Chinese: Evidence for reciprocal relationships between word reading and oral language skills.

This study investigates the longitudinal predictors of the development of Chinese word reading skills and potential bidirectional relationships between Chinese word reading and oral language skills. We examine, in a 2-year longitudinal study, a wide range of theoretically important predictors (phonological awareness, tone awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, rapid automatized naming, Pinyin knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) of reading in 143 primary-school children living in mainland China. Initial levels of reading were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and visual discrimination skills. Only initial reading levels predicted growth in reading. Initial reading also predicted growth in vocabulary knowledge and morphological construction. This pattern demonstrates that the early stages of learning to read in Chinese places demands on semantic (vocabulary) and visual skills in addition to phonological skills. Furthermore, early levels of word reading predict the growth of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness suggesting that the development of these oral language skills is facilitated by learning to read.

Beyond Copying

This study assessed the effects of three intervention programs for Chinese literacy development in kindergartners: the copying (Copy) program; a combined program of copying and Pinyin knowledge (Copy + Pinyin); and a combined program of copying and morphological awareness (Copy + MA). Ninety-seven kindergarteners aged 5–7 years in mainland China (30 in Copy, 32 in Copy + Pinyin, 35 in Copy + MA) participated. Thirty untrained children served as a control group. Children were tested on nonverbal IQ, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, phonological awareness, invented Pinyin spelling, word reading and writing skills in Chinese. After an eight-week intervention period, children in all three intervention groups progressed significantly more than the control group on literacy skills. Furthermore, the combined program of copying and Pinyin knowledge yielded significantly greater improvement in invented Pinyin spelling than the Copy and control groups. Finally, the combined program of copying and morphological awareness yielded greater improvement in word reading and writing, as well as significantly higher orthographic awareness than other groups. These findings suggest the utility of multi-component interventions for early Chinese literacy learning. That the combined program particularly benefited children’s reading and writing skills at the beginning level suggests that both rote practice and analytic strategies should be emphasized in kindergartens and primary schools in order to produce greater improvements in Chinese literacy acquisition.

Character reading and word reading in Chinese: Unique correlates for Chinese kindergarteners

ABSTRACTWe considered the extent to which learning to read Chinese characters and Chinese words (operationally defined as composed of two or more characters) are different in the present study. Study 1 compared reading of the same characters in isolation and those in the context of known words for 63 Chinese third-year kindergarteners. Results showed that children performed significantly better on reading the same characters when embedded within words than when alone. Study 2 further examined the correlates of single-character reading and two-character word reading for 142 Chinese third-year kindergarteners. Despite a high correlation between character reading and word reading, unique correlates emerged. Orthographic awareness, rapid automatized naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge independently explained variance in both character and word reading; however, orthographic awareness explained unique variance in character reading even after statistically controlling for word reading. Whereas orthographic and Pinyin knowledge may be more strongly associated with character recognition, other skills may be more important for learning to read words. Character and word reading may constitute slightly different processes, with somewhat different educational implications for each.

The role of tone awareness and pinyin knowledge in Chinese reading

Previous literature has established that tone awareness is significantly related to reading development in young children (age 3–6 years) across Chinese-speaking societies. To date, no study has been conducted to explicitly examine how tone awareness contributes to reading at the intermediate level of primary schooling, or the relationship between tone awareness and pinyin instruction, a demonstrated booster for phonological awareness in Chinese children. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between tone awareness and pinyin proficiency, and the contribution of each construct to Chinese reading among 8- to 9-year-old children in Mainland China. Experiment 1 compared the relative contribution of tone awareness and pinyin proficiency to Chinese reading, and Experiment 2 explored the contribution of tone sensitivity to Chinese reading after controlling for rapid naming. Results showed that tone awareness was the only significant predictor of Chinese sentence reading when...

Phonemes matter: The role of phoneme-level awareness in emergent Chinese readers

The importance of phonological awareness for learning to read may depend on the linguistic properties of a language. This study provides a careful examination of this language-specific theory by exploring the role of phoneme-level awareness in Mandarin Chinese, a language with an orthography that, at its surface, appears to require little phoneme-level insight. A sample of 71 monolingual Mandarin-speaking children completed a phonological elision task and a measure of single-character reading. In this sample, 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers were unable to complete phoneme-level deletions, whereas 6- to 8-year-old first graders were able to complete initial, final, and medial phoneme-level deletions. In this older group, performance on phoneme deletions was significantly related to reading ability even after controlling for syllable- and onset/rime-level awareness, vocabulary, and Pinyin knowledge. We believe that these results reopen the question of the role of phonological awareness in reading in Chinese and, more generally, the nature of the mechanisms underlying this relationship.

Effectiveness of on-screen pinyin in learning Chinese: An expertise reversal for multimedia redundancy effect

The reported study is aimed at developing effective techniques for reducing learner cognitive overload while using pinyin (a phonetic system) to learn the Chinese language. According to the multimedia redundancy effect, commonly used concurrent visual presentations of characters and pinyin, as well as their auditory pronunciations might impose an unnecessary extraneous load on learners and thus eliminate any potential benefits of using pinyin. In this study, learning effects of three computer-based presentation techniques (full on-screen pinyin transcription, partial on-screen pinyin transcription, and no on-screen pinyin) were compared for learners with higher and lower levels of prior language proficiency and pinyin knowledge. Results demonstrated the superiority of the partial pinyin condition over the two other conditions for more experienced learners. No differences between the three experimental groups were found for learners with lower levels of prior knowledge. The effectiveness of different pinyin presentation techniques depended on levels of learner prior knowledge (an expertise reversal effect).

Braille to print translations for Chinese

In this paper, we study Braille word segmentation and transformation of Mandarin Braille to Chinese characters. The former consists of rule, sign and knowledge bases for disambiguation and mistake correction by using adjacent constraints and bi-directional maximal matching in which segmentation precision is better than 99%. The latter can be divided into two stages: Braille to Chinese pinyin (a phonemic Romanization) and pinyin to characters. By incorporating a pinyin knowledge dictionary into the system, we have perfectly solved the problem of ambiguity in the translation from Braille to pinyin and developed a statistical language model based on the transformation of pinyin to characters. By using Viterbi search, we have built a multi-level graph and found the sequence of Chinese characters with maximal likelihood. By using an N-Best algorithm to get the N most likely character sequences and probing into the means of measurement, our correct candidates within the top-five have a further improvement of 3%. By testing on 40,000 Chinese characters for the evaluation of the system performance, our overall translation precision of Braille codes to Chinese characters for common documents arrives at 94.38%; if proper nouns are not considered, our improvement reaches 2%.

The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition.

This study examined the role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition. The subjects were 154 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders in Beijing who had learned an alphabetic script known as Hanyu Pinyin to help read Chinese characters. Children's performance on tests of various cognitive skills, reading ability, and pinyin knowledge were examined. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that (a) visual skills predicted reading success at lower grades; (b) pinyin knowledge and the ability to discriminate homophonic characters predicted reading success in Grades 2, 3, and 5; and (c) onset-rime awareness, but not phonemic awareness, predicted Chinese reading. This suggests that learning to read Chinese progresses from a logographic phase to an orthographic-phonological phase and that the nature of phonological awareness predicting reading success is contingent on the characteristics of the writing system.