Testing reciprocity between lexical knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese children: a cross-lagged panel ana
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Testing reciprocity between lexical knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese children: a cross-lagged panel analysis Haomin (Stanley) Zhang 1,2,3 Received: 5 July 2019 / Revised: 5 December 2019 / Accepted: 2 January 2020 # Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa and Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The present study aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between multidimensional lexical knowledge (reading vocabulary and morphological awareness) and reading comprehension among early elementary-age Chinese students. Using data from second-grade students (N = 288, Mage=7.8), the study drew upon a cross-lagged panel design to test the bidirectionality of the two constructs. Results showed lexical knowledge, indicated by reading vocabulary and morphological awareness, had a significant effect on the development of reading comprehension skill among young Chinese readers. However, the relationship was unidirectional in nature based on the cross-lagged paths. Implications of this study centered on the conceptualization and operationalization of lexical knowledge, the uniqueness of morphological awareness as a component of lexical knowledge, and variations in instructional practices. Keywords Chinese readers . Lexical growth . Morphological awareness . Reading comprehension . Unidirectional relationship
Multidimensional lexical knowledge and its relation to reading comprehension Lexical knowledge is a multi-faceted and complex construct with multiple cognitive and linguistic skills involved. Henriksen (1999) established a model of lexical development and divided lexical * Haomin (Stanley) Zhang [email protected]
1
Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200241, China
2
Department of English, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200241, China
3
The Foreign Language Research and Teaching Center, School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200241, China
H. (. S.). Zhang
knowledge into three dimensions: (1) partial and precise knowledge, (2) depth of knowledge, and (3) receptive to productive knowledge. She used the terminology semantization to describe the process of mapping meaning onto form and semantic network building. Nation (2001) argues that knowing a word includes three categories of information: form, meaning, and use. Form refers to the understanding of the correspondent graphic and phonological representation of a word. Use entails the understanding of grammatical functions, collocations, and constraints on lexical use. Finally, meaning represents the knowledge of the connection between form and meaning, and the understanding of conceptual meanings and associative pairs. Based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti 2007; Perfetti and Hart 2002), lexical knowledge is comprised of various representational properties of lexicon including orthography, phonology, morpho-syntax, and meaning. More importantly, the quality of each representational category has conse
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