Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2023-03-01
Abstract： Oral language serves as the foundation for reading development. A growing body of studies has pointed to the close connection between children’s oral vocabulary knowledge and their reading abilities. To advance reading research and literacy education, it is vital to clarify the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge in relation to reading abilities over children’s reading development. However, most existing research on this topic focused on either the starting point or the product of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, instead of the developmental trajectory over an extended period of time. To fill in this gap, the present study sought to reveal the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its association with reading abilities among Chinese children across elementary grades. This work recruited 149 Mandarin-Chinese-speaking, typically developing children from Mainland China, and they were followed up for six years from Grades 1 to 6. All participants were tested on a battery of reading-related tests for eight times (Time 1 to Time 8), and 117 children completed all tests from T1 to T8, thus in the final pool. Five testing time points had a 6-month interval (Time 1 to Time 5 were from the Fall semester of Grade 1 to the Fall semester of Grade3), and the subsequent three time points had a one-year interval (T6 to T8 were in the Fall semester from Grades 4 to 6). Children were assessed on their non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), orthographical awareness (OA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 8, and reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension at Time 8. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) the developmental trajectory of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge over time and (2) the predictive effects of the initial level (Time 1) and growth rates (Times 1-8) of oral vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at Time 8 while controlling for IQ, PA, MA, OA, and RAN measured at Time 1. Children’s oral vocabulary knowledge appeared to improve significantly, consistently over grades, and children’s initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linked to their growth rates over the years. The results of the conditional latent growth modeling showed that oral vocabulary knowledge made a significant, direct contribution to reading abilities, reading accuracy (initial status: B = 0.35, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.40, p < 0.001), reading fluency (initial status: B = 0.23, p = 0.037; growth rates: B = 0.27, p = 0.003), and reading comprehension (initial status: B = 0.39, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.48, p < 0.001). Overall, initial status and growth rates of oral vocabulary knowledge were stronger predictors of reading accuracy and reading comprehension than that of reading fluency, and the growth rate was a stronger predictor of reading abilities than the initial status. Our findings elucidate the developmental changes in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as clarify their unique, significant predictive power of reading abilities (reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension) in Chinese children from Grades 1 to 6. The findings shed light on the necessity of providing vocabulary learning opportunities for primary school children over their reading development.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Personality Psychology submitted time 2019-06-06
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