Initial phoneme awareness of 4–6 years old Chinese children and the predictive effect on character reading ability

Abstract

This paper examines the initial phoneme awareness among young Chinese children through two studies. Study 1 implemented a cross-sectional design with 120 children (4–6 years old) to explore the developmental level of phonological awareness of the initial phoneme onset and the rime in syllables. Study 2 monitored the longitudinal development of 127 kindergarten students in a similar age period and further fathomed the longitudinal relation between initial phoneme awareness and character reading ability. At 4–5 years old, performance on dynamic initial phoneme deletion task was significant, suggesting that initial phoneme awareness emerged in preschool Chinese children and could be detected by dynamic deletion task. Children’s variance in character recognition was best explained by dynamic initial phoneme deletion, highlighting the importance of initial phoneme awareness for early character acquisition in young Chinese children. These findings have important implications for early diagnosis and intervention of Chinese dyslexia.