In this study, I explore the nature of Chinese reading in relation to Ken Goodman's transactional socio-psycholinguistic model and theory of reading (Goodman, 1996, 2004). The primary purposes of this study are (1) to establish a sound instrument for Chinese miscue studies, (2) to use this instrument to explore the Chinese reading process by means of miscue analysis, and (3) to provide a knowledge base of the nature of Chinese reading for professionals to make informed and appropriate choices in their teaching of reading and language.The subjects in this study are twelve native English speakers enrolled in a second year Chinese language course at the University of Arizona. To facilitate comparison, all the readers read the same Chinese story Jinfutou (A Gold Axe) that they had never read before. Following Reading Miscue Inventory procedures (Goodman, Watson, and Burke, 2005), each tape-recorded data collection session included an interview, an uninterrupted reading of the story, a retelling, and a follow-up discussion.By coding a total of 643 oral reading miscues generated by the readers in this study, I develop the Chinese Taxonomy of Reading Miscues building on the Goodman Taxonomy of Reading Miscues (Goodman & Burke, 1973). I then examine the oral reading of the Chinese text by the readers through the Chinese Taxonomy. The analyses yield results which show that the miscue patterns produced by the L2 Chinese readers are strikingly similar to the miscue patterns produced by the readers in miscue studies of English and other languages. This demonstrates that readers of all writing systems make use of cues from graphophonic / graphomorphemic, lexico-grammar, and semantic levels to get to meaning, regardless of the differences in writing systems. In addition, readers of Chinese do not read character by character linearly; in order to construct meaning they make use of the three cueing systems, their existing linguistic and conceptual schemata, and a variety of reading strategies. The analyses also show that there are language-specific effects on the use of reading strategies and the selection of language cues in reading Chinese. For instance, readers of Chinese rely more strongly on the syntactic and semantic cues than on the graphic and phonemic cues, as required by the "highly-semantic" characteristic of the Chinese writing system.

This paper critically reviewed the literature on the relationships between Pinyin and Chinese bilingual and monolingual children’s phonological awareness (PA) and identified areas of research worth of further investigation. As the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet providing pronunciation of the universal Chinese characters, Pinyin facilitates children’s early reading development. What research has found in English is that PA is a reliable indicator of later reading success and meta-linguistic training improves PA. In Chinese, a non-alphabetic language, there is also evidence that PA predicts reading in Chinese, which confirms the universality of PA’s role. However, research shows the uniqueness of each language: tonal awareness is stronger indicator in Chinese while phonemic awareness is stronger indicator in English. Moreover, Pinyin, the meta-linguistic training, has been found to improve PA in Chinese and reading in Chinese and possibly facilitate the cross-language transfer of PA from Chinese to English and vice versa.

This paper critically reviewed the literature on the relationships between Pinyin and Chinese bilingual and monolingual children’s phonological awareness (PA) and identified areas of research worth of further investigation. As the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet providing pronunciation of the universal Chinese characters, Pinyin facilitates children’s early reading development. What research has found in English is that PA is a reliable indicator of later reading success and meta-linguistic training improves PA. In Chinese, a non-alphabetic language, there is also evidence that PA predicts reading in Chinese, which confirms the universality of PA’s role. However, research shows the uniqueness of each language: tonal awareness is stronger indicator in Chinese while phonemic awareness is stronger indicator in English. Moreover, Pinyin, the meta-linguistic training, has been found to improve PA in Chinese and reading in Chinese and possibly facilitate the cross-language transfer of PA from Chinese to English and vice versa.

The primary goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of different first language backgrounds on early Chinese reading development by comparing a group of children who spoke a dialect at home and learned to speak and read Mandarin as a second language as soon as they attended Mandarin immersion programs with their Mandarin-speaking monolingual counterparts. The comparison involved five variables, two of which were measures of reading outcomes, word reading accuracy and vocabulary knowledge, and the other three were measures related to processing spoken languages, including rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness. The study was carried out in two phases. Participants in Phase One consisted of 30 dialect-dominant (DD) and 30 Mandarin-monolingual (MD) children from one kindergarten. Half of them were in their second year (K2), and the other half were in their third year of kindergarten (K3). Participants in Phase Two consisted of 218 dialect-dominant children from the third-year kindergarten to the third grade in one school. The assessments in Phase One were administered from March to April in 2011, and the assessments in Phase Two were administered from May to July in 2011. The current study added to extant literature by yielding several important findings with an under-represented population in Chinese reading research. First, the strong link between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, which has been documented in previous studies, is now extended to the group of DD children. Second, the current study revealed that in comparison to the MD group the DD group performed significantly poorer on Mandarin morphological construction in K2, indicating an impact of language proficiency in the development of morphological awareness. This impact appeared to affect the DD children's subsequent vocabulary development. Third, the current study showed grade variability in the rapid automatized naming (RAN)-Chinese reading relation and suggested that the component of language proficiency might affect children's rapid naming speed and moderate the relation of RAN to reading outcomes. Limitations of the current study and directions for future research are presented.

在閱讀文句的過程中，隨著文字內容的不同語言特性，眼睛凝視位置與時間也會有所不同；而使用眼動儀(eye tracker)可以精確記錄眼睛凝視的位置和停留時間，研究者可藉此瞭解閱讀歷程中不同的訊息處理機制。此外，眼動誘發呈現(eye movement contingent display)技術精確且快速的刺激呈現控制，能根據眼球凝視的位置，在特定時間與特定位置立即更換螢幕呈現的文字，如此對於閱讀歷程中訊息處理的動態運作，能夠提供更準確的掌握。實驗一以移動視窗的方式，測量中文閱讀的知覺廣度，發現眼睛每次凝視能知覺並處理的文字範圍，包括凝視點及右側四個中文字。實驗二亦採用移動視窗的方式，並操弄視窗週邊文字遮蔽的時間，發現週邊文字在凝視開始的90毫秒內即被提取；週邊文字遮蔽時間的長短不會影響凝視時間，而是影響在下個凝視點訊息整合之凝視時間。實驗三以邊界技術的方式，探討週邊文字被提取的特性，操弄預視字與目標字在字形與字音的相似或相異；結果顯示在一定的條件下，能獲得字音訊息在早期階段被提取之證據，而字形訊息在整合不同訊息的階段產生明顯的影響。實驗四則以快速促發作業的方式，探討凝視位置促發字的文字特性對目標字訊息整合的影響；結果顯示促發字呈現時間較短的情況下，字音效果只在形異的情況下產生，同樣獲得字音訊息在早期階段被提取之證據。本論文應用所發展的眼動誘發呈現技術進行一系列實驗，分別就中文閱讀的知覺廣度、凝視點對於週邊訊息之處理時序、以及週邊與凝視點位置對文字提取之特性和訊息整合機制加以探討，藉此推論中文閱讀時眼動所引發的動態文字處理歷程。 第一章　眼球運動與閱讀歷程的關係 I 第二章 閱讀的眼動控制之運作與影響因素 10 第三章 中文閱讀的眼動研究回顧 20 研究目的 30 第四章 眼動誘發呈現技術的發展 31 第五章 中文閱讀的知覺廣度與呈現改變的影響 34 實驗一 39 第六章 凝視點對週邊訊息的提取時間 45 實驗二 48 第七章 凝視點對週邊文字提取的特性 54 實驗三 55 第八章 凝視點上文字的語音提取 62 實驗四Ａ 64 實驗四Ｂ 65 綜合討論 68 參考文獻 76 附錄一：實驗一與實驗二使用的文章材料 109 附錄二：實驗三與實驗四的句子與操弄單字 113 / In the process of reading, the location and duration of eye fixations varied accroding the language properties of the text. Using the eye tracker nowdays, it precisely records the location and fixation duration of eye movements. That gives an opportunity to understand the cognitive operations of reading. Furthermore, the eye movement contingent display technique is capable to change the display with both the speed and precision. It changes the text on the computer screen at specific location and time, according the location where the eyes are fixating. This advanced technique provides the possibility to explore the nature of dynamic processing of reading. Experiment One uses the moving window paradigm to measure the perceptual span of Chinese reading. It showed that the range of perceived characters in reading includes four characters to the right of fixations. Experiment Two also uses the moving window paradigm but the time of showing "window" is varied. It showed that the characters in peripheral were perceived within 90 msec in the beginning of fixations. The time to mask the peripheral text did not affect the fixation duration of display change, but the time of next fixation. Experiment Three uses the boundary paradigm to show the type of character information can be retrieved in peripheral and integrated with the information on the next fixation. It showed the phonological code can be retrieved in peripheral, but the orthographic code is dominated when integrating information across fixations. Experiment Four uses the fast priming paradigm to show the type of information can be retrieved on fixations. It showed the same pattern for both the third and forth experiment. The phonological effect can be obtained under certain circumstances, when the availability or validity of orthographic information is reduced. The dynamic processing of eye movements in reading and a general model for cognitive operation are discussed.

This thesis examined the role of metalinguistic skills in concurrent and subsequent word-level reading and oral vocabulary among Chinese-English bilingual children who learned Chinese as their heritage language and English as their societal language. While previous studies on biliteracy development among this group of children have mostly focused on one of the two languages, this thesis gave equal emphasis to both languages. The research had two general purposes: 1) to investigate the role of phonological awareness, morphological awareness and orthographic processing in predicting word-level reading and oral vocabulary in Chinese and English concurrently and longitudinally; and 2) to examine the cross-linguistic role of phonological and morphological awareness to word-level reading and vocabulary, concurrently and longitudinally, between Chinese and English. These goals were explored through two interrelated studies, using path analyses. The participants included 91 Chinese-English bilingual children, recruited from kindergarten and Grade 1 Chinese heritage language classes in Canada. They were tested twice, one year apart, on a battery of cognitive and literacy measures in Chinese and English. Findings of Study 1 on within-language relationships indicated that, for word-level reading, all three metalinguistic skills were independent concurrent predictors in English, whereas only morphological awareness was predictive in Chinese. For oral vocabulary, morphological awareness was the only concurrent predictor in both languages. The longitudinal contributions of these metalinguistic skills were mostly mediated through the auto-regressors of the literacy outcomes. Findings of Study 2 on between-language relationships demonstrated that Chinese phonological awareness directly contributed to concurrent and subsequent English word reading beyond the effect of concurrent English phonological awareness. Yet, Chinese morphological awareness indirectly predicted concurrent and subsequent English oral vocabulary through concurrent English morphological awareness. Similarly, English morphological awareness only indirectly predicted concurrent and subsequent Chinese oral vocabulary. These findings suggest that different metalinguistic skills are required for literacy development in Chinese and English. Moreover, metalinguistic skills transfer to literacy, even across two typologically distant languages, but the transfer patterns of phonological and morphological awareness to different literacy skills vary considerably. These results are discussed in light of current reading and transfer models as well as linguistic contexts of biliteracy acquisition.

This thesis examined the role of metalinguistic skills in concurrent and subsequent word-level reading and oral vocabulary among Chinese-English bilingual children who learned Chinese as their heritage language and English as their societal language. While previous studies on biliteracy development among this group of children have mostly focused on one of the two languages, this thesis gave equal emphasis to both languages. The research had two general purposes: 1) to investigate the role of phonological awareness, morphological awareness and orthographic processing in predicting word-level reading and oral vocabulary in Chinese and English concurrently and longitudinally; and 2) to examine the cross-linguistic role of phonological and morphological awareness to word-level reading and vocabulary, concurrently and longitudinally, between Chinese and English. These goals were explored through two interrelated studies, using path analyses. The participants included 91 Chinese-English bilingual children, recruited from kindergarten and Grade 1 Chinese heritage language classes in Canada. They were tested twice, one year apart, on a battery of cognitive and literacy measures in Chinese and English. Findings of Study 1 on within-language relationships indicated that, for word-level reading, all three metalinguistic skills were independent concurrent predictors in English, whereas only morphological awareness was predictive in Chinese. For oral vocabulary, morphological awareness was the only concurrent predictor in both languages. The longitudinal contributions of these metalinguistic skills were mostly mediated through the auto-regressors of the literacy outcomes. Findings of Study 2 on between-language relationships demonstrated that Chinese phonological awareness directly contributed to concurrent and subsequent English word reading beyond the effect of concurrent English phonological awareness. Yet, Chinese morphological awareness indirectly predicted concurrent and subsequent English oral vocabulary through concurrent English morphological awareness. Similarly, English morphological awareness only indirectly predicted concurrent and subsequent Chinese oral vocabulary. These findings suggest that different metalinguistic skills are required for literacy development in Chinese and English. Moreover, metalinguistic skills transfer to literacy, even across two typologically distant languages, but the transfer patterns of phonological and morphological awareness to different literacy skills vary considerably. These results are discussed in light of current reading and transfer models as well as linguistic contexts of biliteracy acquisition.