Small wins big: Analytic Pinyin skills promote Chinese word reading

This study examined whether application knowledge of Pinyin, a written phonological representation of Mandarin, would promote the learning of Chinese character and word reading. Participants of the study were 296 Beijing children who were in their 3rd year of kindergarten. Several measures, including invented Pinyin spelling, syllable and phoneme deletion, Pinyin letter name knowledge, and Chinese word reading, were administered to the participants when they were approximately six years old and had not yet had formal training in Pinyin reading and writing at school. The invented Pinyin spelling task required children to write Pinyin syllables to the best of their abilities and was scored using a multidimensional scale of phonological sensitivity, similar to the invented spelling measure used for English by Tangel and Blachman (1992). Another Chinese reading test was administered one year later to see how the time 1 skills were associated with time 2 Chinese word reading. Results indicated that invented Pinyin spelling was a unique predictor of Chinese word reading one year later, even with all other skills, including time 1 word reading, statistically controlled. Results suggest both that early understanding of the Pinyin system (including partial mastery) allows children to learn new words by themselves and that Pinyin sensitivity facilitates children’s attention to the phonological system of Chinese. Both are beneficial for Chinese word reading acquisition.

 

Lin, D., McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., Zhang, Y., Li, H., Zhang, J., Aram, D., & Levin, I. (in press). Small wins big: Analytic Pinyin skills promote Chinese word reading. Psychological Science.