The relationship among morphological awareness, character recognition and vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children: A cross-lagged model

The present study aims to examine the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge of elementary school students. Numerous studies on the language development of Chinese children show that as language learning progresses, an individual's language system gradually develops and matures. Morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge play an important role in children's language development. There is a solid one-to-one correspondence between syllables, morphemes and characters in Chinese. It is necessary to consider morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge simultaneously in the language development among elementary school children. Three follow-up tests were administered to 146 first-grade elementary school children over a 2-year period to examine changes in the developmental relationships between morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition, and vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children in grades 1 through 3. In addition, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming of digits, orthographic awareness and intelligence were all measured as control variables at Time 1 (spring semester of Grade 1). A cross- lagged model was conducted to explore the relationship among children's morphological awareness, character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at different time points. The results showed that the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge varied across developmental stages after controlling the aforementioned control variables. (1) Chinese character recognition at Time 1 significantly predicted the homophone and homograph awareness at Time 2; (2) Vocabulary knowledge at Time 1 significantly predicted compounding awareness and Chinese character recognition at Time 2; (3) Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 significantly predicted homophone, homograph and compounding awareness at Time 3. (4) Homograph awareness at Time 2 significantly predicted vocabulary knowledge at Time 3. The results indicated that the relationship among different levels of morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese elementary children has been changed over time. From Grade 1 to Grade 3, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge had stable predictive effects on morphological awareness, while the predictive effects of morphological awareness on Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge changed with age.