How do different types of morphological awareness in Chinese and English contribute to English reading for Chinese adolescents studying English as an additional language?
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Shen, Yaqi
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 07, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Amy Crosson, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Pui-Wa Lei, Outside Unit & Field Member
Matthew Poehner, Major Field Member
Jonna Kulikowich, Minor Field Member
Kimberly Anne Powell, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- morphological awareness
vocabulary knowledge
reading comprehension
Chinese adolescents
English - Abstract:
- As an English language learner, I have encountered many challenges on my journey of learning to read in English– difficulties in memorizing large amounts of academic words, comprehending new and complicated vocabulary in context, and sometimes lacking background knowledge to comprehend specific texts. Therefore, as a bilingual teacher-scholar, I always ask myself, why is learning to read in English so challenging? Scholars have conducted extensive studies to explore this question, they have shown that many factors could have influenced on reading comprehension such as phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary knowledge, background knowledge, working memory, reading strategies. One of these factors that has been extensively investigated for emergent bilinguals from diverse first language backgrounds is morphological awareness, which refers to students’ ability to reflect on and manipulate the meaningful units of words (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). There is a growing body of research investigating the relationship between English morphological awareness and English reading comprehension for emergent bilinguals, and these studies demonstrate that English morphological awareness is highly related to English reading-related skills. Additionally, studies provide evidence that emergent bilinguals’ first language morphological awareness could facilitate English reading-related skills, however, it remains unclear how much emergent bilinguals’ first language could transfer to English morphological awareness. Moreover, it is unclear how different types of morphological awareness in both first and second language contribute to English vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. In order to understand how different aspects of morphological awareness in each language contribute to English reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, I conducted two studies for my dissertation. First, I developed a Chinese derivational morphology measure with preliminary evidence of reliability and validity for Chinese native speakers at the middle school level. Second, I investigated the relationship between first and second languages of the Chinese-English EFL students, especially for two distinct aspects of morphology in Chinese and English, which are compounding morphology (e.g., book+store=bookstore) and derivational morphology (e.g., success-successful). In Study 1, I developed a new Chinese derivational morphology measure, piloted it, and validated it by the Normal-Ogive Harmonic Analysis Robust Method. The findings of Study 1 indicated that Chinese Derivational Awareness measure scores had high reliability. However, the NOHARM method showed that the Chinese Derivational Awareness test might be multidimensional. Item difficulty generated by the NOHARM method suggested that Chinese adolescents’ performance in producing derived words might be related to types of derivational suffixes were measured. In Study 2, I traced Chinese EFL adolescents’ literacy skills over the course of half a year and explored the possible relationship between morphological awareness in Chinese and English with English reading-related skills using hierarchical linear regression. The findings of Study 2 showed that English derivational awareness was the only the significant predictor for English reading comprehension, and English compound awareness is the significant predictor for English vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggested that to enhance Chinese EFL students’ English vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, both compounding and derivational morphological instruction in English should be provided. This dissertation also provides implications for current theoretical framework and classroom instruction.