a study of taiwanese efl tertiary level …ijsk.org/uploads/3/1/1/7/3117743/1_language_test.pdfa...

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X

International Journal of Research In Social Sciences © 2013 IJRSS & K.A.J. All rights reserved www.ijsk.org/ijrss

1

A STUDY OF TAIWANESE EFL TERTIARY LEVEL STUDENTS’

CHINESE AND ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS ON THEIR

ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

Young-Hsiang Cheng1 , Shu-Chu Chen2*

National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan1

National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan2*

[email protected] ; [email protected]*, corresponding author

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate the role of Chinese and English phonological awareness on EFL students’

English proficiency. A hundred and fifty EFL tertiary level freshmen participated in the study by taking Chinese and

English phonological awareness tests, and TOEIC test. The results of Pearson correlation and multiple regression

analyses showed that learners’ performance in English phonological awareness tests had high correlation with that

of their TOEIC Test, and it contributed 58.4 % variance to English TOEIC. Chinese phonological awareness test

had moderate relationship with TOEIC, but contributed only 5.8 % variance of TOEIC test. Also, learners’ L1

Chinese phonological awareness test scores had moderate relationship with that of their L2 English phonological

awareness test. Finally, learners’ English proficiency had significant influence on both English and Chinese

phonological awareness performance.

Keywords: Phonological Awareness, TOEIC, English Proficiency

1. INTRODUCTION

Phonological awareness is defined as the ability to

attend to and manipulate the sound structure of

languages, and low performance of phonological

awareness is significantly related to poor language

proficiency, spelling (Chen & Chien, 2002; Hu,

2004; Jian, 2004), vocabulary learning (Dixon, Stuart

& Masterson, 2002; Hu, 2003; Wang, Koda, &

Perfetti, 2003) and early reading skills (Bialystok,

Luk, & Kwan, 2005; Chol, Ko, & Wang, 2009;

Chiappe, Siegel & Wade-Woodley, 2002; Clare,

Canobi, & Faulkner, 2004; Ho & Keung, 2008;

Muter & Diethelm, 2001). The relationship between

learners' phonological awareness and reading literacy

is more complex if the influence of learners' native

language is considered. Many studies (Durgunoglu,

Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Muter & Diethelm,

2001) on language transfer have demonstrated a close

relationship between L1 phonological awareness and

L2 reading proficiency within two alphabetic

languages like Spanish and English. However, the

transfer effect from a non-alphabetic L1 to an

alphabetic L2 is fewer and unclear. In addition, most

L2 studies (Chen, 2009; Lee, 2006; Wu, 2010)

explored young readers' phonological awareness.

Comparatively less research focuses on adult EFL

learners' phonological awareness and L2 reading. In

order to fill in the gap, the researcher investigated the

role of EFL learners' L1 (i.e. Chinese) and English

phonological awareness on their English reading

performance. The research questions of this study are

listed as follows:

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


2

1. What are the relationships among EFL college

students’ English phonological awareness test,

Chinese phonological awareness test, and their

TOEIC English reading proficiency performance?

2. Which one (i.e. Chinese or English phonological

awareness) is a significant predictor of English

proficiency?

3. For learners with high and low English

proficiency, what are their differences in their

English and Chinese phonological awareness test?

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The Definition of Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness refers to the ability to attend

to and manipulate the sound structure of language. It

involves the understanding that spoken languages can

be broken down into smaller components in many

different ways, including sentences into words and

words into syllables, onsets and rimes, and individual

phonemes (Jian, 2004; McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005;

McBride-Chang & Kail, 2002; Shu et al., 2008; Siok

& Fletcher, 2001; Wager, Torgesen & Rassotte,

1987; Yopp, 1992). The development of learners’

phonological awareness is gradual (Jian, 2004;

McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005; Yopp, 1992), moving

from the initial phonological skills of rhyming and

sentence segmentation, followed by the ability of

blending and segmentation of syllables. The

identification of onset-rime to the most challenging

and latest developing phonological awareness ability

is to manipulate phonemes.

2.2 The Relationship between Phonological

Awareness and Reading Proficiency

Research has demonstrated that children’s

phonological awareness is related to their spelling

and reading performances of an alphabetic language

both concurrently and longitudinally (Adam, 1990;

Hu, 2003; McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005; Lafrance &

Gottardo, 2005; McBride-Chang & Kail, 2002; Shu

et al., 2008; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). Low

performance of phonological awareness is

significantly related to poor language proficiency,

spelling (Chen & Chien, 2002; Hu, 2004; Jian, 2004),

vocabulary learning (Dixon, Stuart, & Masterson,

2002; Hu, 2003; Wang, Koda, & Perfetti, 2003) and

early reading skills (Bialystok, Luk, & Kwan, 2005;

Chol, Ko, & Wang, 2009; Chiappe, Siegel & Wade-

Woodley, 2002; Clare, Canobi, & Faulkner, 2004; Ho

& Keung, 2008; Muter & Diethelm, 2001). For

instance, Hu (2003) found that children with high

phonological awareness learned new vocabulary

obviously rapidly than those with low phonological

awareness.

In terms of the effects of phonological awareness on

learners' with L1 alphabetic language background,

many studies on L1 English-speaking children have

showed that the development of phonological

awareness is closely related with reading proficiency

at all age levels (Adams; 1990; Goswami, 1999;

Savage & Carless, 2004; Wagner & Torgeson, 1987),

and a reciprocal relationship between reading

proficiency and phonological awareness is also

reported (Stahl & Murray, 1994: Yopp, 1992). In

addition, L1 children phonological awareness is

highly correlated with their reading proficiency (Ehri,

1997; Clare, Canobi, & Faulkner, 2004; Goswami,

1992), and it is a necessity for alphabetic literacy

(Bryant, Maclean & Bradley, 1990). In other words,

excellent reading proficiency lies in the development

of vocabulary, syntax and phonology (Lundberg,

2002)

With regards to the effects of phonological awareness

on learners’ with L2 alphabetic language background,

research found that there is apparently a close

phonological correlation between two alphabetic

languages. Phonological awareness in one language

is highly correlated with phonological awareness and

word reading proficiency in the other language

(Durgunoglu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993).

Phonological awareness was an obvious predictor of

performance on word recognition tests both within

and across languages (Cisero & Royer, 1995). Muter

and Diethelm (2001) also found that phonological

awareness of ESL children were a predictor of

English reading proficiency regardless of children’

different language backgrounds.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


3

Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, and Lacroix (1999)

inspected the cross-language transfer of phonological

awareness between alphabetic languages by

examining 122 English-speaking children in French

classes and found both French and English

phonological awareness similarly led to reading

proficiency of French. The study of Later, Lindsey,

Manis and Bailey (2003) also showed that the

phonological awareness of 249 Spanish ESL children

transferred to English. The studies above all pointed

out that cross-language transfer will occur within

alphabetic languages.

2.3 Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological

Awareness between Alphabetic and Non-

Alphabetic Languages

Nevertheless, the research mentioned only carried on

cross-language correlation of children learning to

read in two alphabetic languages like Spanish and

English. The results of two different writing systems

like Chinese and English might differ (Akamatsu,

2003; Mann, 1987; McBride et al., 2005; Read,

Zhang, Nie & Ding, 1986; Wang & Koda, 2005). The

study of Akamatsu (2003) showed that L2 learners of

a non-alphabetic L1 backgrounds such as Japanese or

Chinese read English word slower than those of an

alphabetic L1 background due to the disturbance of

L1 orthographic characters. It seemed to support that

learners of non-alphabetic language backgrounds

might have difficulties in reading new words (Holm

& Dodd, 1996), especially for ESL learners with poor

L1 phonological awareness. They usually had

difficulty in learning English. Wydell and

Butterworth (1999) conducted a study about a 16-

year-old Japanese boy, who performed well in

Japanese phonological awareness and reading but

poorer in English phonological awareness test and

reading than his Japanese peers. Therefore, it is

expected that phonological and orthographic

processing will have great influence on children

learning to read Chinese and English.

Negative transfer from a non-alphabetic L1 to an

alphabetic reading proficiency is reported (Liow &

Poon, 1998). Because English and Mandarin Chinese

are two different writing systems, it takes different

levels of phonological awareness to learn to read

Mandarin Chinese and English (Atwill, Blanchard,

Burstein, & Gorin, 2007; Huang & Hanley, 1997;

McBride-Chang et al., 2008). Nonetheless, the

previous studies have demonstrated that phonological

awareness is an important predictor of Chinese

character recognition in children, but the correlation

between Chinese phonological awareness and

English reading is not significant (Chow, Mc-Bride-

Chang & Surgess, 2005; Ho & Bryant, 1997; Hu &

Catts, 1998). The position of phonological awareness

in reading English and Mandarin Chinese is similarly

important. It can be implied that phonological

awareness might be a general ability for children in

learning to read not only an alphabetic language but

also a non-alphabetic language (Chow et al., 2005).

The reason why Chinese learners have difficulties in

English reading might because Chinese writing

system is different from English, thus Chinese

learners have low skill to segment phonemes (Read,

Zhang, Nie, & Ding, 1986). The study of Huang and

Hanley (1994) also showed that children from Hong

Kong who had learned English letters performed

better on English phonological awareness but poorer

on Chinese phonological awareness than Taiwanese

children who had learned a Chinese phonetic script,

Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao. Accordingly, it is obvious that

Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao is insufficient for Taiwanese

children to achieve high phonological awareness

(Cheung, Chen, Lai, Won & Hills, 2001). L1

negative transfer in L2 spelling might occur because

of the different phonology systems because they

found Chinese ESL children living in Canada have

difficulties in spelling the English sounds / θ / and / ð

/ which do not exist Chinese phonology (Wang &

Geva, 2003).

However, a study of Lee (2006) investigated the

relationship between phonological awareness and

learners from a non-alphabetic language background.

It found that English L2 phonological awareness

from Taiwanese junior high school students was

associated with their English proficiency and students

with high phonological awareness performed

apparently better than those with low phonological

awareness. In the study, Lee found that rhythm is a

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


4

significant predictor of English phonological

awareness (Siok & Fletcher, 2001). Similar study can

be found in Chen (2009) in which it showed if

Taiwanese students perform well with Chinese

phonological awareness, the ability will have positive

effects on their English phonological awareness. This

indicated that L1 phonological awareness experiences

affected L2 phonological awareness among EFL

learners with non-alphabetic L1 backgrounds. That is

to say, learners with high Chinese phonological

awareness ability led to higher English phonological

awareness. Recent study (Wu, 2010) has

demonstrated that Chinese phonological awareness

was significantly correlated not only with Mandarin

Chinese proficiency but also with English

proficiency. And it also found that onset is a

significant predictor of Chinese phonological

awareness. In addition, it showed that Mandarin

Chinese phonological awareness was also significant

correlated with English phonological awareness. Her

study provided evidence that development of English

phonological awareness on the part of Mandarin

Chinese-speaking children was remarkable benefited

from their development of Mandarin Chinese

phonological awareness. And it also showed that

English phonological awareness is a significant

predictor of English proficiency. The results above

were also consistent with previous studies (Chen,

2009; Chen et al., 2004; Cisero & Royer, 2005;

Comeau et al, 1999; Ho & Keung, 2008; Lee, 2006;

Liu, Perfetti, & Wang, 2004).

Previous studies focused more on children’ Chinese

and English phonological awareness tests than those

of adults. Research centered on adult EFL college

students’ phonological awareness and its influence on

English reading are few. To bridge the gap, this study

aims to explore the relationship for college students’

Chinese, English phonological awareness and their

English reading. Also, the relationship for high

proficient and low proficient EFL learners’ Chinese,

English phonological awareness and their English

reading is another research focus.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Participants

A hundred and fifty college freshmen from one

technical university were selected to participate in

this research. The average scores of their TOEIC

were around 480. Their ages were nineteen or twenty,

with 75 males and 75 females. Most of them have

learned English for 12 years since they were in

elementary schools. Because all of them were EFL

learners with Mandarin Chinese as native languages,

their levels of Chinese proficiency did not vary

significantly.

3.2 Instrument

Three instruments were used in this study to

investigate whether there is a correlation between a

Taiwanese college student’s Chinese phonological

awareness and English proficiency. The three

instruments included Chinese phonological

awareness test, English phonological awareness test

and TOEIC test (including listening and reading

proficiency).

3.2.1 Chinese and English phonological awareness

tests

The Chinese phonological awareness test was

designed to examine the participants’ Mandarin

Chinese phonological awareness. Based on the study

of Wu (2010), the test contains two parts: Chinese

Rime Oddity Test (Hu, 2008) and Chinese Onset Test

(Ko, 2004). In the first part, three examples were

given first, and then the participants would hear 20

questions of monosyllabic spoken Mandarin Chinese

characters through a tape recorder and they had to

select the correct one from three different answers,

then underlining the answer. Each question was

played once and participants would get one point for

answering each question correctly. The total score of

this part was 20 points. The second part of the test

was Chinese Onset Oddity Test, which was similar to

the first part with 3 examples and 20 questions. The

participants had to choose the one which varied in the

initial phoneme from the other two. The total score of

this part was 15 points with each question worth one

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


5

point. Cronbach's Alpha value for Chinese

phonological awareness test is .734.

In term s of English Phonological Awareness Test, it

was developed by Edrange Publications (2002). The

English phonological awareness test consisted of five

parts: phoneme segmentation, onset test, coda test, /s/

sound detection and rhythm test. Examples were

given in the each part first. Phoneme segmentation

was to examine whether a student could segment

phonemes in a word because most college students

could only count the syllables of a word. Their

awareness of phoneme might be insufficient. There

were four words on the question sheet for the

participants, they were required to write down how

many phonemes there were in each word (e.g., splash

contains 5 sounds).

The second part of the onset test composed of five

questions designed to test the examiners’ onset

awareness. Participants were required to write down

the first sound of the word in each question. Because

the test was designed for college students, the

questions were more difficult than that for children.

For example, the first sound of chef is /ʃ/, not / tʃ/

literally. Therefore, students’ with low English

proficiency could not perform well only by guessing.

The third part of the test was coda test, which

measured the examiners’ coda awareness with four

questions as well. The question level was as difficult

as that of onset test. The fourth part was /s/ sound

detection. The participants were given a sentence

‘Sam gave Susie a box of pencils for her sixth

birthday.’ They had to mark the letters which were

pronounced the sound /s/. Most Taiwanese college

students did not know what the right pronunciation

was (/z/ or /s/) while seeing words with the letter s.

The last part was rhythm test, which measured

students’ rime awareness with seven yes-no

questions. Two words were given in each question

and the examiners had to answer whether they

rhymed with each other. The total points in the

English phonological awareness test were 31 with

each question worth one point and the time limitation

was 20 minutes. The results would show the

participants English phonological awareness. The

Cronbach's Alpha value for English phonological

awareness test is .626

3.2.2 TOEIC test

TOEIC Test (Test of English for International

Communication) is an English proficiency test

designed for people whose native languages are not

English and professional knowledge is not required.

The test results can reflect whether a person can

communicate with others in English well and will be

a criterion by many international business companies.

TOEIC test includes 100-item listening

comprehension test and reading comprehension test.

The total score is 990 and one question worth five

points. The listening comprehension has four parts:

Photographs, Question-Response, Conversations and

Talks. All the 100 questions were played by a

computer and the participants were required to finish

them in forty-five minutes. The reading

comprehension included three parts: Incomplete

Sentences, Text Completion and Reading

Comprehension. The 100 questions in reading

comprehension were printed on text books and the

time limitation was seventy-five minutes. The total

score were measured by Common European

Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,

Teaching, Assessment (CEF), which divides TOEIC

score into six levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2.

Therefore, TOEIC Test measures a wide range of

English proficiency.

3.3 Data Collection Procedure

Three measures were prepared in advance including

the question sheet, the answer sheet, the tape recorder

and the computer. Because the participants were not

all from the same departments, students of different

departments took the three tests separately according

to English courses schedule. The three tests were

conducted in a quiet classroom. In the first ten

minutes, the examiners listened to the instructions

carefully. If they had questions, the researcher would

give them help so that they could do well in the tests.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


6

After all the participants understood the instructions

of tests, the tests were administered to them step by

step as follows. First of all, Chinese phonological

awareness test was administered in 40 minutes.

Second, the participant was required to finish English

phonological awareness test in another 40 minutes.

The final test, TOEIC Test was administered in the

following week. The listening comprehension was

done in 45 minutes and the reading comprehension

lasted 75 minutes. The total time limitation of TOEIC

Test was 120 minutes. The results of the three tests

were examined by running the statistical package of

the social science (SPSS) computer software.

Through the results of the statistical analysis, the

researcher could explore the role of Chinese and

English phonological awareness on Taiwanese

college students’ English proficiency.

3. 4 Data Analysis

The statistical program SPSS 17.0 for Windows was

applied for data analysis. The data collected from the

scores of the three tests was processed by descriptive

statistics. In addition , Pearson correlation was used

to probe the correlation between a Taiwanese college

student’s Chinese phonological awareness and

English proficiency, Chinese phonological awareness

and English phonological awareness, and English

phonological awareness and English proficiency

respectively. The correlation coefficient is a measure

of linear association between two variables. It can

vary from -1 (perfect negative correlation) through 0

(no correlation) to +1 (perfect positive correlation).

As a rule of thumb, correlations less than 0.3 were

deemed as low or weak. Those in the range of 0.3 to

0.69 were moderate, and those were greater than 0.7

as being strong or high (Bryman & Cramer, 2004).

Finally, multiple regression analyses conducted to see

whether Chinese or English phonological awareness

is a significant predictor of English reading

proficiency.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of

EFL learners' L1 (i.e. Chinese) and English

phonological awareness on their English reading

performance. In this section, the findings were

presented in accordance with the research questions,

followed by the discussion about this study. English

phonological awareness test included five factors:

sound segmentation (E1), onset test (E2), coda test

(E3), “s” sound detection (E4) and rhythm test (E5),

while Chinese phonological awareness test was made

up of onset test (C1) and coda test (C2).

4.1 Results of Research Question 1: What are the

relationships among EFL college students’ English

phonological awareness test, Chinese phonological

awareness test, and their TOEIC English reading

proficiency performance?

As shown in Table 1, the average TOEIC scores of

the participants was 487.41, which means they had

low intermediate English proficiency. In terms of the

participants’ performance in the English

Phonological Awareness Test, they did the best in

Onset Test (M = 3.99) whereas they had the lowest

score in Coda Test (M = 2.53). It seemed to imply

that students were more sensitive to the initial sound

than the final sound.

In addition, descriptive statistics of 150 participants’

Chinese Phonological Awareness Test showed that

they performed well in both Rime Oddity Test (M =

17.95) and Onset Oddity Test (M = 12.95).

Compared the test performance between English and

Chinese Phonological Awareness Test, participants

did better in Chinese phonological awareness test

(30.70/35 = 0.88) than in English phonological

awareness test (21.87/31 = 0.71). One possible reason

might be that Chinese were their native tongue and

they had contacted this language since childhood;

thus, it was much easier for them to acquire and the

existence of vast number of homophones gave them

less memory load. On the other hand, the participants

were not familiar with the sound system of English;

therefore, it may be difficult for them to acquire the

English sounds (Lee, 2006).

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


7

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of participants’ test performance

Test subtest M SD Total Score

TOEIC Test 487.41 111.619 990

Chinese

Phonological

Awareness

Test

C1 Rime Oddity Test 17.95 1.849 20

C2 Onset Oddity Test 12.95 1.636 15

Total 30.70 3.375 35

English

Phonological

Awareness

Test

E1 Phoneme

Segmentation

6.00 1.003 8

E2 Onset Test 3.99 .306 5

E3 Coda Test 2.53 1.066 5

E4 /s/ Sound Detection 4.67 1.052 6

E5 Rhythm Test 4.62 1.379 7

Total 21.87 2.898 31

In terms of the relationship between participants’

TOEIC and English phonological awareness test

performance, Pearson Correlation analyses showed

that there were high correlation between TOEIC and

the overall performance of English phonological

awareness test (r = .764, p < .001). The results were

consistent with previous studies (Chen, 2009;

Chiappe, Siegel & Wade-Woodley, 2002; Chow et

al., 2005; Lee, 2006; McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005;

Muter & Diethelm, 2001; Wu, 2010) which reported

that learners’ English L2 phonological awareness was

strongly associated with their English proficiency.

Specifically, TOEIC had significant and medium

correlation with the subtests of Phoneme

Segmentation (r = .460, p < .001), coda test (r =. 463,

p < .001), /s/ Sound Detection (r =.434, p < .001),

and Rhythm Test(r = . 556, p < .001). However,

TOEIC only had low correlation with the Onset Test

(r =. 217, p < .001).

Secondly, the relationship between learners'

phonological awareness and proficiency is more

complex if the influence of learners' native language

is considered. Many studies (Durgunoglu, Nagy, &

Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Muter & Diethelm, 2001) on

language transfer have demonstrated a close

relationship between L1 phonological awareness and

L2 proficiency within two alphabetic languages like

Spanish and English. However, whether the situation

holds true if learners’ native language is of non-

alphabetic language system(e.g. Chinese).

Results showed that participants’ TOEIC English

proficiency test has moderate relationship with their

L1 Chinese phonological awareness test (r = .648, p <

.001). The findings were in agreement with previous

studies (Chen, 2009; Lee, 2006; Wu, 2010) that

Chinese phonological awareness was significantly

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


8

correlated with English proficiency. Similarly,

TOEIC had significant and moderate relationship

with both subtests including Rime Oddity Test (r =

.526, p < .001), and Onset Oddity Test (r = .531, p <

.001).

For the relationship between learners’ L2 English and

their L1 Chinese phonological awareness tests,

Pearson Correlation showed that Chinese

phonological awareness test has moderate

relationship with English phonological awareness test

(r = .594, p < .001). The findings were in support of

previous studies (Chen, 2009; Comeau et al, 1999)

that cross-language transfer of phonological

awareness was found across languages with different

orthographic systems (Atwill et al., 2007; Chen,

2009; Gottardo, 2002; Gottardo et al., 2001; Ho &

Keung, 2008; McBride-Chang et al., 2008).

4.2 Results of Research Question 2: Which one (i.e.

Chinese or English phonological awareness) is a

significant predictor of English proficiency?

Regression analysis can show which variables are

significant contributors to the dependent variable, as

well as how much of the variance in English reading

performance can be accounted for by the two

phonological awareness tests. Adjusted R Square

change indicated that English phonological

awareness contributed most variance (R=.764, R

Square= change .584; 58.4%) to English reading

performance, while Chinese phonological awareness

test accounted for 5.8% of the variance. The result

exhibited that English phonological awareness is a

significant predictor of English reading proficiency

and the result is in agreement with previous studies

(Chen, 2009; Lee, 2006, Wu 2010).

Table 3. Statistics between Chinese and English phonological awareness test

Model

R R-Squared

Adjusted R-

Squared Std. Error

R-Squared

Change

F Chang

1 .764a .584 .581 72.249 .584 207.637

2 .801b .642 .637 67.256 .058 23.789

a. Predict Variable: (Constant), English

b. Predict Variable: (Constant ), English, Chinese

4.3 Results of Research Question 3: For learners

with high and low English proficiency, what are their

differences in their English and Chinese phonological

awareness test?

The high proficient group (40 persons) was made up

of the top 27 % of the total 150 participants, whereas

the low proficient (40 persons) group was composed

of the bottom 27 % of the total 150 participants. Each

group consisted of 40 persons. Table 4 showed the

descriptive statistics and the results of independent t

tests.

Table 4 also displayed significant group differences

between the high and the low groups in both the

English and the Chinese overall phonological

awareness test (p < .05), as well as in all the subtests.

Consistent with previous studies (Chen & Chien,

2002; Chiappe, Siegel & Wade-Woodley, 2002; Hu,

2004; Lee, 2006; Muter & Diethelm, 2001), the result

showed that proficient students had significantly

better phonological awareness performance than

those less proficient ones in their phonological

awareness tests.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


9

Table 4. Groups’ performance in the subtests of English and Chinese phonological awareness tests

Test group M SD

F t df p

Standard

Deviation

E1 Phoneme

Segmentation

High

Low

6.65

5.40

.834

.841

0.168 6.68 78 .00***

1.25

E2 Onset Test High

Low

4.05

3.90

.221

.379

5.15 2.163 78 .034**

0 .15

E3 Coda Test High

Low

3.15

1.90

.893

.900

0.47 6.24 78 .00***

1.25

E4 /s/ Sound

Detection

High

Low

5.20

4.13

.853

1.114

2.70 4.85 78 .00***

1.07

E5 Rhythm Test High

Low

5.83

3.85

1.217

1.051

1.56 7.77 78 .00***

1.97

overall performance of

English phonological test

High

Low

24.88

19.27

2.377

1.894

2.65 11.65 78 .00***

5.60

C1 Rime Oddity Test High

Low

19.10

16.55

1.150

2.062

7.59 6.83 78 .00***

2.55

C2 Onset Oddity Test High

Low

13.83

11.58

1.083

2.024

12.36 6.19 78 .00***

2.25

overall performance of

Chinese phonological

test

High

Low

32.92

27.38

1.575

4.198

23.12 7.83 78 .00***

5.55

Note: **

p < .01, ***

p < .001.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


10

5. CONCLUSION

5.1 Summary of the Main Findings

Previous studies have explored the relationship

between the language proficiency and phonological

awareness and found that children’s language

proficiency was closely related to both Chinese and

English phonological awareness (Chen, 2009; Lee,

2006; Wu, 2010). The present study aims to

investigate the relationship among the university

students’ English proficiency and their Chinese and

English phonological awareness. The findings were

stated as follow: 1) EFL tertiary level students’ L2

(English) phonological awareness was associated

with their English proficiency, 2) Chinese

phonological awareness was significantly correlated

with their English proficiency, 3) EFL tertiary level

students’ English L2 phonological awareness was

associated with their L1 Chinese phonological

awareness, 4) English phonological awareness is a

significant predictor of English reading proficiency,

5) students with high language proficiency performed

apparently better than less–proficient ones in both

English and Chinese phonological awareness tests.

5.2 Pedagogical Implication and Limitation of the

Study

In conclusion, phonological awareness has significant

effect on L2 language proficiency. Previous studies

(Harrison & Krol, 2007; Savage & Carless, 2005)

have emphasized the importance of phonological

awareness for early reading ability. Therefore,

teachers are suggested to designed some

phonological awareness activities with various

degrees of difficulty, for English phonological

awareness training could also be an effective way to

help learners understand the sound structures in their

native and the target language, and even further

improve their reading proficiency. Zapparoli (2006)

recommends that a story-based phonological

awareness curriculum would be helpful to give a rich

context for learners to acquire phonological

awareness skills. According to Lee (2006), a

phonological awareness training concentrating on

phoneme segmentation and phoneme deletion skills

would be more helpful in promoting learners’ reading

and pronunciation accuracy.

And because cross-language transfer of phonological

awareness is clear across two languages with

different orthographies, teachers should not

concentrate only on students’ English development

but should give them more chances to notice and

manipulate individual sounds both in L1 and L2 (Wu,

2010). After the improvement of learners’ L1

Chinese phonological awareness, learners’ ability in

L2 English phonological awareness may improve as

well. So the training of L1 Chinese phonological

awareness seems necessary for EFL students to

develop English phonological awareness even though

they are of two different languages systems.

In terms of Chinese phonological training, another

Romanization system, Zhuyin Fuhao, which uses

symbols based on Chinese characters to represent the

sounds of spoken Mandarin, can help Taiwanese

learners in learning phoneme deletion and pseudo-

word reading(Chen, 2009). Thus, the Chinese Zhuyin

system should be conscientiously introduced in the

phonological awareness trainign program as a

support for their later English literacy education.

In terms of English phonological awareness training,

Taiwanese EFL instructors used phonics to train

students to acquire the phonological awareness skills.

According to Chen and Chien (2002), phonics is an

approach employed for coding the grapheme-

phoneme correspondences and the spelling patterns

for orthographic language reading. Understanding

that words are composed of graphemes and

phonemes, teachers should design activities to raise

learner’s phoneme and phonological awareness.

Because of the orthographic differences between

Chinese and English and the cross-cultural transfer

from these two languages, teachers could introduce

phonological awareness knowledge to help EFL

learners to decode English words. These teaching

methods can reinforce learners' phonological

awareness and improve English proficiency in second

language education.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


11

There were at least two limitations in the present

study. First, the English phonological awareness

test may be too difficult for the participants because

the test was mainly designed for the English-speaking

adults. Second, because the Chinese phonological

awareness test was mainly designed for children,

there were only two subtests (i.e. rime and onset)

included. Other subtest like phoneme segmentation

was not included in this Chinese phonological

awareness test. Even though this research has

revealed a positive linkage between EFL learners'

English proficiency and their phonological

awareness, more research is called for a better control

of the instruments administered to the participants.

REFERENCES

1. Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read:

Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press.

2. Akamatsu, N. (2003). The effects of first

language orthographic features on second language reading

in text. Language Learning, 53, 207-231.

3. Atwill, K., Blanchard, J., Burstein, K., & Gorin,

J. S. (2007). Receptive vocabulary and cross-language

transfer of phonemic awareness in kindergarten children.

Journal of Educational Research, 100(6), 336-345.

4. Bialystok, E., Luk, G., & Kwan, E. (2005).

Bilingualism, biliteracy, and learning to read: Interaction

among languages and writing systems. Scientific Studies of

Reading, 9(1), 43-61.

5. Bryant, P. E., Maclean, M., & Bradley, L. (1990).

Rhyme, language, and children’s reading. Applied

Psycholinguistics, 11, 237-252.

6. Bryman, A. E., & Cramer, D. (2004).

Constructing variables. Handbook of Data Analysis, 17-34.

7. Chen, S. H., & Chien, L. C. (2002) A

developmental study on phonological awareness spelling in

Taiwanese EFL children. English Teaching and Learning,

27(1), 41-66.

8. Chen, T.-W. (2009). The role of phonological

awareness: Phonological awareness in alphabetic and

logographic languages for Taiwanese students (master’s

thesis, Kent State University).

9. Chen, X., Anderson, R. C., Li, W., Hao, M., Wu,

X., & Shu, H. (2004). Phonological awareness in bilingual

and monolingual Chinese children. Journal of Education

Psychology, 96(1), 142-151.

10. Cheung, H., Chen,H. C., Lai, C. Y., Wong, O. C.,

& Hill, M. (2001). The development of phonological

awareness: Effects of spoken language experience and

orthography. Cognition, 81, 227-241.

11. Chiappe, P., & Siegel, L. S. (1999.) Phonologcal

awareness and reading acquisition in English- and Punjabi-

speaking Canadian children. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 91, 20-28.

12. Chiappe, P., Siegel, L. S., & Wade-Woolley, L.

(2002). Linguistic diversity and the development of reading

skills: A longitudinal study. Scientific Studies of Reading,

6, 369-400.

13. Choi, J., Ko, I.-Y., & Wang, M. (Eds.). (2009).

The important of morphological awareness in Korean-

English biliteracy acquisition. Cognition, 14, 132-142.

14. Chow, B. W., McBride-Chang, C., & Burgess, S.

(2005). Phonological processing skills and early reading

abilities in Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners learning to

read English as a second language. Journal of Educational


15. Cisero, C. A., & Royer, J. M. (1995). The

development of cross-language transfer of phonological

awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20,

275-303.

16. Clare, W., L. F., Canobi, K. H., & Faulkner, D.

(2004). Patterns of analogical reasoning Among beginning

reader. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 226-247.

17. Comeau, L., Cormier, P., Grandmaison, E., &

Lacroix, D. (1999). A longitudinal study of phonological

processing skills in children learning to read in a second

language. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(1), 29-43.

18. Dixon, M., Stuart, M., & Masterson, J. (2002).

The relationship between phonological awareness and the

development of orthographic representations. Reading and

Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 295-316.

19. Durgunoglu, A. Y., Nagy, W. E. & Hancin-Bhatt,

B. J. (1993). Cross-language transfer of phonological

awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 453-

465.

20. Edrange Publications. (2002). Edrange

Homework Helper, 32-34. Brisbane, Australia: Edrange

Publications.

21. Ehri, L. C. (1997). Sight word learning in normal

readers and dyslexics. In B. A. Blachman (Ed.),

Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia:

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


12

Implications for early Intervention (pp. 163-190). Mahwah,

N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

22. Goswami, U. (1992). Analogical reasoning in

children. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associations.

23. Goswami, U. (1999). Causal connections in

beginning reading: The importance of rhyme. Journal of

Research in Reading, 22(3), 217-240.

24. Gottardo, A. (2002). The relationship between

language and reading skills in bilingual Spanish-English

speakers. Topics in Language Disorders, 22(5), 46-70.

25. Gottardo, A.,Yan, B., Siegal, L. & Wade-

Woolley, L. (2001). Factors related to English reading

performance in children with Chinese as a first language:

More evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological

processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(3), 530-

542.

26. Harrison, G. L., & Krol, L. (2007). Relationship

between L1 and L2 word-level reading and phonological

processing in adults learning English as a second language.

Journal of Research in Reading, 30(4), 379-393.

27. Ho, C. S.-H., & Bryant, P. (1997). Development

of phonological awareness of Chinese children in Hong

Kong. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 109-126.

28. Ho, C. S.-H., & Keung, Y.-C. (2008). Transfer of

reading-related cognitive skills in learning to read Chinese

(L1) and English (L2) among Chinese elementary school

children. Elsevier Cognition, 34, 103-112.

29. Holm, A., & Dodd, B. (1996). The effect of first

written language on the acquisition of English Literacy.

Cognition, 59, 119-147.

30. Hu, C. F. (2003). Phonological memory,

phonological awareness, and foreign language word

Learning. Language Learning, 53, 429-462.

31. Hu, C. F. (2004). Leaning to spell with poor

phonological awareness. English Teaching & Learning,

28(4), 31-52.

32. Hu, C.F., & Catts, H. W. (1998). The role of

phonological processing in early reading ability: What we

can learn from Chinese. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2(1),

55-79.

33. Huang, H. S., & Hanley, J. R. (1994).

Phonological awareness and visual skills in learning to read

Chinese and English. Cognition, 54, 73-98.

34. Huang, H. S., & Hanley, J. R. (1997). A

longitudinal study of phonological awareness, visual skills,

and Chinese reading acquisition among first graders in

Taiwan. International Journal of Behavioral Development,

20(2), 249-268.

35. Jian, S.-R. (2004). Development of speech

production, speech perception, and phonological awareness

in Mandarin-English bilingual children (master’s thesis,

Chaoyang University of Technology).

36. Ko, Y.-C. (2004). Transfer of reading-related

cognitive skills in learning to read Chinese (L1) and

English (L2) among Chinese elementary school children.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, 103-112.

37. Lafrance, A., & Gottardo, A. (2005). A

longitudinal study of phonological processing skills and

reading in bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics,

26, 559-578.

38. Lee, C.-H. (2006). The role of phonological

awareness in Taiwanese students’ English reading and

pronunciation acquisition (master’s thesis, Tsing Hua

University)

39. Lindsey, K. A., Manis, F. R., & Bailey, C. E.

(2003). Prediction of first-grade reading in Spanish-

speaking English-language learners. Journal of Educational


40. Liow, S. J. R., & Poon, K. K. L. (1998).

Phonological awareness in multilingual Chinese children.

Applied Psycholinguistics, 19(3), 339-362.

41. Liu, Y., Perfetti, C. A., & Wang, M. (Eds.).

(2004). Chinese-English biliteracy aquisition: cross-

language and writing system transfer. Cognition, 97, 67-88.

42. Lundberg, I. (2002). The child’s route into

reading and what can go wrong. Dyslexia, 8, 1-13.

43. Mann, V. A. (1987). Phonological awareness:

The role of reading experience. Cognition, 24, 65-92.

44. McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.-R., Liu, H., Wagner,

R. K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., Cheuk, C. S., & Muse, A. (2005).

Changing models across cultures: Associations of

phonological awareness and morphological structure

awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second

graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United

States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 140-

160.

45. McBride-Chang, C., & Ho, C. S.-H. (2005).

Predictors of beginning reading in Chinese and English: A

2-year longitudinal study of Chinese kindergarteners.

Scientific Sutdies of Reading, 9(2), 117-114.

46. McBride-Chang, C., & Kail, R. V. (2002). Cross-

culture similarities in the predictors of reading acquisition.

Child Development, 73(5), 1392-1407.

Nov. 2013. Vol. 3, No.3 ISSN 2307-227X


13

47. McBride-Chang, C., Tong, X., Shu, H., Wang, A.

M.-Y., Leung, K., & Tardif, T. (2008). Syllable, Phoneme,

and tone: Psycholinguistic units in early Chinese and

English word recognition. Scientific Studies of Reading,

12(2), 171-194.

48. Muter, V., & Diethelm, K. (2001). The

contribution of phonological skills and letter knowledge to

early reading development in a multilingual population.

Language Learning, 51, 187-219.

49. Read, C., Zhang, Y. F., Nie, H. Y., & Ding, B. Q.

(1986). The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends

on knowing alphabetic writing. Cognition, 24, 31-44.

50. Savage, R., & Carless, S. (2004). Predicting

growth of non-word reading and letter-sound knowledge

following rime- and phoneme-based teaching. Journal of

Research in Reading, 27(3), 195-211.

51. Savage, R., & Carless, S. (2005). Phoneme

manipulation not onset-rime manipulation ability is a

unique predictor of early reading. Journal of Chile

Psychology and Psychiatry, 46(12), 1297-1308.

52. Shu, H., Peng, H., & McBride-Chang, C. (2008).

Phonological awareness in young Chinese children.

Developmental Science, 11(1), 171-181.

53. Siok, W. T., & Fletcher, P. (2001). The role of

phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in

Chinese reading acquisition. Developmental Psychology,

37(6), 886-889.

54. Stahl, S. A., & Murray, B. A. (1994). Defining

phonological awareness and its relationship to early

reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 221-234.

55. Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The

nature of phonological processing and its casual role in the

acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101,

192-212.

56. Wang, M., & Geva, E. (2003). Spelling

performance of Chinese ESL children: Lexical and visual-

orthographic processes. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 1-

25.

57. Wang, M., & Koda, K. (2005). Commonality and

differences in word identification skills among learners of

English as a second language. Language Learning, 55, 71-

98.

58. Wang, M., Koda, K. & Perfetti, C.A. (2003).

Alphabetic and non-alphabetic L1 effects in English word

identification: A comparison of Korean and Chinese

English L2 leanrers. Cognition, 87,129-149.

59. Wu, Y. W. (2010). Cross-language transfer of

phonological awareness in Mandarin Chinese-speaking

children in Taiwan (master’s thesis, National Pingtung

University of Education).

60. Wydell, T. N., & Butterworth, B. (1999). A case

study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual

dyslexia. Cognition, 70(3), 273-305.

61. Yopp, H. K. (1992). Developing phonemic

awareness in young children. The Reading Teacher, 45,

696-703.

62. Zapparoli, R. (2006). Rethinking Taiwan’s grade

one curriculum: A “sound” alternative to early teaching of

alphabet. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Tsing Hua

University, Hsin Chu, Taiwan.

a study of taiwanese efl tertiary level …ijsk.org/uploads/3/1/1/7/3117743/1_language_test.pdfa...

Documents