语素意识对小学生阅读流畅性的影响：汉字识别的中介作用

The Effect of Morphological Awareness on Reading Fluency: Mediating Role of Word Recognition

为了考察汉字识别在语素意识和阅读流畅性之间的作用,本研究通过对小学一至六年级856名儿童的语素意识、汉字识别和阅读流畅性的测查,采用结构方程模型进行分析,结果发现:(1)语素意识在整个小学阶段都影响阅读流畅性;(2)在一至五年级,汉字识别在语素意识和阅读流畅性之间起着中介作用;在六年级,其中介作用不显著。结果表明,语素意识可以促进阅读流畅性发展,且年级越低,汉字识别在其中的中介作用越大。

Reading fluency is defined as the speed and accuracy expression of reading. In recent years, reading fluency is one of the focuses of researchers. The lexical quality hypothesis claims that the quality of word representations affects reading, and word representation is related with phoneme, orthography and morphology. Moreover, the multidimensional view of reading fluency considers that reading fluency includes many aspects, such as morphological processing. Chinese is an ideographic language and morphology plays an important role in reading. Previous studies showed that Chinese morphological awareness contributed to word recognition and reading comprehension, however, whether Chinese morphological awareness contributes to reading fluency is rarely examined currently. In addition, few studies investigate reading fluency for Chinese students from grade I to grade 6 in primary school. If morphological awareness affects reading fluency, how morphological awareness impacts on reading fluency is still open to question. The aims of this study were to explore the influence of morphological awareness on reading fluency and to test the mediating effect of word recognition between them. Meanwhile, we also investigated if the mediating effect varied as the grade level. In the current study, 856 students from two primary schools from grade l to 6 in Shanxi province were administered by a test battery that included measures of morphological awareness （including homophone awareness, compound word production and radical knowledge）, word recognition and reading fluency. Two models were conducted to examine the role of morphological awareness and word recognition on reading fluency. The direct model was used to determine the contribution of morphological awareness to reading fluency among grades i^6 by using the structural equation model. The indirect model aimed to determine the mediating effect of word recognition between morphological awareness and reading fluency. The results showed that （I） Morphological awareness significantly predicted reading fluency from grade I to 6（ β1 = .73, p 〈 0.001; β2 = .66,p 〈 0.001;β3 = .81,p 〈 0.001;β4 = .69,p 〈 0.01;β5 = .73,p 〈 0.001;β6 = 0.80,p 〈 0.001）; （2） Morphological awareness significantly predicted word recognition from grade I to 6 （β1 = 0.58,p 〈 0.01; β2 = 0.62,p 〈 .001;β3 = 0.67,p 〈 0.001; β4 = .55,p 〈 .01;β5 = 0.55,p 〈 .001;β6 = 0.76,p 〈 .001）, and word reeognition significantly predicted reading fluency from grade 1 to 5 （β1= 0.73,p 〈 0.001; β2 = .72,p 〈 0.001;β3 = 0.46,p 〈 0.01 β4 = 0.39,p 〈 0.01; β5 = 0.41,p 〈 0.01;β6 = 0.09, p 〉 0.05）. The results showed that morphological awareness was important for reading fluency and word recognition was the mediator between morphological awareness and reading fluency in grade l to 5, and for grade 6 children, morphological awareness affected reading fluency directly not through word recognition.