Language-specific and language-general influences on reading comprehension development: comparisons between an alphabetic and morphographic script

Successful reading skills are essential for full engagement in today's society because, in addition to education and employment, a range of cultural and social activities rely on the ability to efficiently and accurately assimilate information from text. An independent and successful reader must develop both adequate word reading and reading comprehension. Our focus is to advance knowledge about the development of reading comprehension, the goal of most reading.

Our research will build on evidence that an understanding of morphemes (morphological awareness) is related to a child's reading comprehension level. Morphemes are the smallest meaning units within (spoken) words, e.g., 'un' is a morpheme that when added to a base word indicates 'not', as in 'unhappy'. An understanding of morphemes is critical for understanding complex mutimorpheme English words such as 'unhappy', 'happier', 'unhappiness', and how they are related.

We aim to further our understanding of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension by comparing two groups of reader: English children learning to read English, and Hong Kong Chinese children who are learning to read Chinese and English in parallel. The reason for studying these two groups of young readers is that the English and Chinese writing systems place a different emphasis on morphemes. The English writing system represents the spoken sounds of the language, whereas the Chinese writing system represents the morphemes. Thus, to read an unfamiliar word aloud in English the beginner reader has to sound out the letters. Typically, young readers often know the meanings of words that they have not seen before in their printed form. By sounding out the word, the young reader can access the word meaning in his/her spoken lexicon. In contrast, beginner readers of Chinese cannot 'sound out' words: there are few clues to the pronunciation of Chinese words, but because the writing system represents the morphemes there are clues to the word meanings, even if the actual word has not been seen before in its printed form. For example, the semantic radical for sun is also used in the written forms of other words such as warm and evening, as well as shine, all sun-related concepts.

We have three aims:

1) We will compare the influence of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in a child's first language, comparing English and Chinese first language learners, who are beginner, intermediate, and advanced readers to identify changes in the relation across early literacy development. For English, we propose that morphological awareness will be most important for advanced young readers, because more complex texts have a greater number of multipmorphemic words. In contrast, we propose that Chinese morphological awareness will influence Chinese first language reading from the earliest stages of reading because the writing system represents morphemes.

2) We seek to determine if the influence of morphological awareness is language-general or language-specific by comparing its influence on the English reading comprehension of the two groups. If morphological awareness is language-general, it should have a more important influence on beginner readers' English reading comprehension for the Hong Kong Chinese group because they are attuned to morphology early in reading development. If the influence is language-specific, morphological awareness should influence English reading comprehension similarly in both groups.

3) We seek to understand why the English reading comprehension of Hong Kong Chinese readers does not keep apace with their English word reading. We expect that the reading comprehension proficiency gap, found in other second language groups, may be influenced by language-specific morphological awareness.

The knowledge generated through this work will influence reading development theory and also pedagogy for first and second language learners.

Reading comprehension is critical for educational success and employment. Thus, a greater understanding of its development has broader societal and economic impacts through informing the teaching of literacy in UK schools, which will support children towards better reading and learning competence, and ultimately provide them with better opportunities in the workplace. This work will also have important pedagogical impacts on the teaching of English to Chinese readers in Hong Kong, where bilingualism is the aim, and the teaching of second-language learners more broadly.

Short- to medium-term impacts

1. Teachers and teaching assistants in the participating schools are non-academic beneficiaries of this research. We will engage the teachers and teaching assistants from the outset by explaining the purpose of the work and the nature of the tasks, during the data collection phrase. Thus, they will be involved in the execution of this work, albeit to a limited extent. The results will be disseminated to teachers and teaching assistants during the course of the project in the form of both oral presentations and written reports in schools.

2. Local policy makers and practitioners (e.g., Educational Psychologists) are also non-academic beneficiaries. At the end of the grant, the PI will organise a small dissemination workshop in Lancaster, to which representatives from the LEA, including educational psychologists, in addition to SENCOs, headteachers, and parents will be invited. The purpose of this workshop will be not only to report on the results of the current project, but also to consider the impact of different language skills on reading comprehension development at different stages of reading development. Dissemination will not only cover the findings of the UK English readers in our study, but also what we have learned about children learning to read in a second language. Thus, data from both project sites will inform this dissemination and impact.

The research is of benefit to those outside of the local area, so the main findings and implications will be published on a webpage to make the research immediately and readily accessible to the larger (and international) community.

3. The Research Assistants employed on the grant will acquire specific research skills and more generalisable skills that will support his/her future careers. Thus, the RAs too are beneficiaries of the work.

4. The children who participate in this work may, themselves, be regarded as beneficiaries. We strive to minimise out-of-class time and (obviously) only schedule testing at times that would not disrupt lessons and progress. The tasks that the children will engage in involve one-to-one work reading stories and answering questions about them, and thinking about and reflecting on language. Thus, the time spent out of class should be regarded as positive and beneficial for these children.

5. One long-term impact is how data such as ours contribute to evidence-based curricula. To date, models of reading and reading development are largely based on studies of alphabetic languages. Thus, our comparison of two typographically different languages has the potential to inform the current debate about language-general and language-specific models of reading. Cain has been consulted about the proposed changes to the UK literacy curriculum and, thus, has the potential to inform future debates about the teaching of reading at a national level and she is regularly involved in CPD at an international level. Both first and second language learners will be a focus of this impact.

6. A long-term beneficiary group comprises Hong Kong Chinese children learning to read English and other groups of second language learners. Identification of the common correlates of reading comprehension and the determination of the factors underlying the second language reading comprehension proficiency gap will inform the instruction to these groups.