Reading Development in Chinese Children

Book flyer
MS Word
International
MS Word

Catherine McBride-Chang, Hsuan-Chih Chen

ISBN: 0-89789-809-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-809-6

DOI:

248 pages

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 12/30/2003

List Price: $99.95 (UK Sterling Price: £68.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Education » Education (General)

Description: This text reviews both similarities and unique cultural, linguistic, and script differences of Chinese relative to alphabetic reading, and even across Chinese regions. Chinese reading acquisition relies upon children's strongly developing analytic skills, as highlighted here. These 16 chapters present state-of-the-art research on diverse aspects of Chinese children's reading development.

This edited volume presents research on Chinese children's reading development across Chinese societies. Authors from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, among others, present the latest findings on how Chinese children learn to read. Reading acquisition in Chinese involves some parameters typically not encountered in some other orthographies, such as English. For example, Chinese readers in different regions might speak different, mutually unintelligible languages, be taught to read with or without the aid of a phonetic coding system, and learn different scripts. This book both implicitly and explicitly considers these and other contextual issues in relation to developmental and cognitive factors involved in Chinese literacy acquisition.

One of the clearest themes to emerge from this volume is that, across regions, Chinese children, despite lack of explicit teaching of phonetic or semantic character components, learn to read largely by integrating visible print-sound and print-meaning connections. Rather than learning to read Chinese characters by rote, as is sometimes mistakenly believed, these children are analytic learners. Chapters in this book also cover such topics as Chinese children's reading comprehension, cognitive characteristics of good and poor readers, and reading strategies of bilingual and biscriptal readers. This book is a useful reference for anyone interested in understanding either developing or skilled reading of Chinese or for those interested in literacy learning across cultures.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Catherine McBride-Chang and Hsuan-Chih Chen
Chinese Reading Development in Some Major Chinese Societies: An Introduction by Him Cheung and Lisa Ng
Component Skills for Reading Chinese in Primary School Children by May Jane Chen
A Longitudinal Study on the Effects of Phonological Awareness and Speed of Processing on Early Chinese Character Recognition by Catherine McBride-Chang and Yiping Zhang
Development of Orthographic Knowledge and Its Relationship with Reading and Spelling among Chinese Kindergarten and Primary School Children by Connie Suk-Han Ho, Pamela Wing-yi Yau, and Agnes Au
The Role of Character Components in Reading Chinese by Hwawei Ko and Chia Feng Wu
Response Errors in Reading Chinese Characters: A Developmental and Sociocontextual Perspective Hui Li
Linguistic Awareness in Learning to Read Chinese: A Comparative Study of Beijing and Hong Kong Children by Lily Chan and Lei Wang
The Role of Character Schema in Learning Novel Chinese Characters by Kuan-Chun Tsai and Terzinha Nunes
Combining Phonological and Semantic Cues in Reading Pseudocharacters: A Comparative Study by Anke W. Blote, Ping Chen, Elis Overmars, and A.H.C. van der Heijden
Beginning Readers' Awareness of the Orthographic Structure of Semantic-Phonetic Compounds: Lessons from a Study of Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language by Nancy Ewald Jackson, Michael E. Everson, and Chuanren Ke
Developmental Characteristics of Eye Movements in Reading Chinese by Hsuan-Chih Chen, Hua Song, Wing Yi Lau, Kin Fai Ellick Wong, and Siu Lam Tang
Metacognitive Beliefs and Strategies in Reading Comprehension for Chinese Children by Carol K. K. Chan and Dois Y. K. Law
The Unitization Effect in the Development of Reading Chinese and English: Evident from Letter/Character-Component Detection by Liang Tao and Alice Healy
Lexical Representation and Processing in Chinese-speaking Poor Readers by Hua Shu, Xiangzhi Meng, and Alice Cheng Lai
Biscriptal Literacy Development of Chinese Children in Singapore by Susan J. Rickard Liow and Tng Siok Keng
Pinyin and Phonotactics Affect the Development of Phonemic Awareness in English-Cantonese Bilinguals by Him Cheung

About the Author: CATHERINE MCBRIDE-CHANG is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

HSUAN-CHIH CHEN is Professor of Psychology (Chair Professor) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he is also a former Head of the Psychology Department and the founding Director of the Centre for Cognition and Brain Studies.

LCC Class: 372


All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2010 ABC-CLIO 130 Cremona Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93117, 805-968-1911