Newsletter No. 432

No. 432, 19.2.2014 3 I n recent years, kindergarteners in Hong Kong are being taught difficult words at increasingly young ages. According to Prof. Catherine McBride of the Department of Psychology, this may have negative consequences. She said, ‘Children have huge differences in their developmental readiness. A lot of children may not be ready to start reading at such a young age.’ Professor McBride is a developmental psychologist who studies literacy development across cultures. One of her research areas is early predictors of dyslexia in Chinese children. She found that rapid automatized naming (RAN) and morphological awareness are useful cognitive tasks for distinguishing Chinese children with and without dyslexia. A RAN task measures how quickly a child can name blocks of colour, pictures or symbols presented randomly in different orders across columns. Unlike RAN, the test of morphological awareness is a screening tool developed by Professor McBride and her colleagues specifically for understanding reading, including dyslexia, in Chinese children. She explained, ‘Morphological awareness in Chinese is based on the fact that the Chinese language has many compound words. Children who have difficulty learning compound words tend to be poor readers. This is partly because they seem not to have the ability to take the same morpheme from a compound word and apply it in other contexts.’ Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. For example, in the word 大學 (university), 大 (big) is a morpheme. This morpheme can be found in many other compound words, such as 大陸 (mainland) and 大哥 (eldest brother). Morphological awareness refers to awareness of and access to the meaning structure of language. One task that Professor McBride has developed to test morphological awareness involves asking children to combine familiar morphemes to produce strange compound words for describing novel objects. She said, ‘One example in Chinese would be: we call the machine that flies 飛機 (flying machine). What would we call a machine that runs? In this case 跑機 (running machine) would be good answer.’ Children who are better at that skill tend to be better readers because most Chinese words are compound words, and understanding how morphemes can be compounded to create new words is essential for learning to read and for building vocabulary. Morphological awareness is especially important in Hong Kong because there is no phonological coding system for Cantonese commonly used here like the Pinyin system used for Putonghua in mainland China. This makes the speech sound aspect less important as a predictor of reading success. And for the same reason, Professor McBride said that the role of parental mediation is crucial in younger children’s literacy development. In Hong Kong children often learn to read and speak both Chinese characters and English words with the ‘look and say’ method. Professor McBride said, ‘Here in Hong Kong, there is no way for you to know the sound of a word unless your teachers or your parents tell you. So you need a lot of parental scaffolding.’ When it comes to reading and writing, parents may have different approaches to helping their children. But Professor McBride found that copying strategies such as asking kindergartners to trace lines of a character were not very effective in getting them to read better. Instead, if parents focus on the meaning units of Chinese, namely, the semantic radicals, to teach their children to write Chinese characters, their children tend to read better. She explained, ‘For example, there is a mouth radical ( 口 ) in a lot of characters. If they say: “Oh, there is a mouth radical in the character for eat ( 吃 )”, that may help their children to identify new words with the same radical, like the characters for sing ( 唱 ) or shout ( 叫 ) .’ Professor McBride gave a tip on helping Hong Kong children to learn English—motivation. ‘When we learn our first language, it’s for communication. We’re motivated. If you want a cookie, or you want to go outside, you can say that and you’ll get it. Learning English here is more like homework. That’s not really motivating children in any way.’ McBride教授建立了網站，為家長和教師提供更多關於教導中文的 建議 ： http://chineseearlyliteracy.co.nr/ Professor McBride has developed a website to provide parents and teachers with some practical tips on Chinese. Please visit: http:// chineseearlyliteracy.co.nr/ 探索兒童的讀寫世界 Locating the Building Blocks of Literacy 近 年香港幼稚園學生愈來愈早學一些很艱深的字 詞。心理學系 Catherine McBride 教授認為這樣做 或有不良後果。她說：「兒童的發展程度差別很大，許多幼 童的成熟程度，可能還沒足以學習閱讀。」 McBride教授是發展心理學家，專門研究不同文化的讀寫 能力發展，其研究範疇之一是中國兒童的讀寫障礙指標。 她發現，快速唸名和語素意識這兩種認知測試，有助判斷 兒童是否有讀寫障礙。快速唸名是把一些色塊、圖片或符 號隨機排列成行，要求兒童以最快速度一一讀出。 快速唸名在國外使用已久，語素意識測試則是McBride 教授與同僚針對中國兒童設計，專用於了解他們的閱讀能 力，包括讀寫障礙。她解釋：「中文有許多組合詞，中文的 語素意識就是以此為基礎。難以掌握組合詞的兒童，閱讀 能力會較差。部分原因是他們無法把組合詞中的某一語素 抽出，再應用於不同的情況。」 所謂語素，是語言中最小的意義單位。例如，在大學這個 詞中，「大」就是一個語素，在如大陸、大哥等組合詞都 能找到。語素意識是指對語言中的意義結構的了解和運 用。McBride教授開發的語素意識測試，是叫兒童利用語 素合成一些古怪的詞來形容新事物。她舉例：「比如，中文 把會飛的機器叫做『飛機』，那麼，會跑的機器應該叫甚 麼？『跑機』是正確答案。」精於這種技巧的兒童多半閱讀 能力良好，這是因為許多中文詞都是組合詞，而且懂得利 用語素組合為新詞，是學習閱讀和掌握詞彙所必需的。 語素意識在香港尤其重要，因為這裏不像中國大陸那樣， 會使用拼音學習普通話，本地通行的廣東話沒有採用類 似的字音編碼系統。因此，語音意識並非判斷讀寫能力 的最重要指標。McBride教授說，也因為本地沒有採用 拼音方式，父母的輔導對於幼童讀寫能力的發展尤其關 鍵。香港兒童通常是以「看字照唸」的方法學習中英文字 詞。McBride教授說：「在香港，如果沒有老師或父母先 唸一遍給你聽，你就不會知道某個字應怎樣唸。所以，父 母的幫助很重要。」父母教導子女讀寫時方法很多。但 McBride教授指出，單純叫兒童一筆一劃依樣抄寫的方 法，不大能提高兒童的閱讀能力。反而，如果母親教導兒 童寫中文字時，注重中文的意義單位，即表意偏旁，那麼子 女的閱讀能力會更好。她說：「比如，許多中文字都是口字 旁。如果他們說：『看啊，這個吃字是口字旁的』，這可以 幫助子女辨認有相同偏旁的新字，如唱或叫。」 關於協助香港兒童學英文，McBride教授的忠告是：激發 動機。「我們學習母語時是為了溝通。我們是有目的的。如 果你想吃餅乾或者想到戶外，你說出來就可以如願。但在 此地學英文像是做功課，談不上激發孩子任何動機。」