Text Comprehension Mediates Morphological Awareness, Syntactic Processing, and Working Memory in Predicting Chinese Written Composition Performance

The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about 4 issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b) whether they are important predictors of Chinese written composition and, if so, the relative magnitudes and independence of their predictive relations; (c) whether observed predictive relations are mediated by text comprehension; and (d) whether these relations vary or are developmentally invariant across 3 years of writing development. Based on analyses of the performance of students in Grades 4 (n = 246), 5 (n = 242), and 6 (n = 261), the results supported morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory as distinct yet correlated abilities that made independent contributions to predicting Chinese written composition, with working memory as the strongest predictor. However, predictive relations were mediated by text comprehension. The final model accounted for approximately 75% of the variance in Chinese written composition. The results were largely developmentally invariant across the 3 grades from which participants were drawn.