ERIC Number: EJ1027433
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1088-8438
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Chinese Children's Statistical Learning of Orthographic Regularities: Positional Constraints and Character Structure
Tong, Xiuli; McBride, Catherine
Scientific Studies of Reading, v18 n4 p291-308 2014
This study examined how Chinese children acquire the untaught positional constraints of stroke patterns that are embedded in left-right structured and top-bottom structured characters. Using an orthographic regularity pattern elicitation paradigm, 536 Hong Kong Chinese children at different levels of reading (kindergarten, 2nd, and 5th grades) were asked to produce invented characters with left-right and top-bottom stroke pattern pairs. Even kindergartners were aware of the positional constraints of stroke patterns and were able to produce orthographically legal pseudocharacters with different stroke pattern pairs. This ability improved across grade level. Moreover, there was a production asymmetry in which children produced more top-bottom structured pseudocharacters than left-right structured pseudocharacters. The error pattern analysis further revealed that more positional errors were observed in producing left-right structured noncharacters than in the top-bottom structured noncharacters. This production asymmetry seemed to reflect children's experience with a distribution asymmetry observed between left-right (59.19%) and top-bottom structured characters (23.46%) in a corpus of school Chinese. These results are discussed within the framework of statistical learning of orthographic regularity in Chinese.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Elementary School Students, Written Language, Language Acquisition, Kindergarten, Grade 2, Grade 5, Chinese, Reading, Age Differences, Accuracy, Error Patterns
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Primary Education; Kindergarten; Grade 3; Grade 5; Intermediate Grades
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Hong Kong
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A