Development of Morphological Awareness in Young Chinese Readers: Comparing Poor Comprehenders and Good Comprehenders

The present study explored the relationship between reading comprehension skill and morphological awareness among young Chinese readers. The objectives were to investigate whether morphological awareness is a critical cognitive and linguistic ability to differentiate poor comprehenders and good comprehenders and to further scrutinize the interconnected relationship between reading comprehension skill and morphological awareness in both poor comprehenders and good comprehenders. Chinese 2nd-grade students (N = 275) in 3 different cities of China completed measures of reading comprehension skill and morphological awareness. Drawing on cluster analysis and multivariate analysis, the study found that young Chinese children with reading difficulties demonstrated weakness in all 3 facets of Chinese-specific morphological awareness (derivation, lexical compounding, and compounding structure). In addition, the study indicated that morphological awareness had a more substantial effect on reading comprehension skill in young poor comprehenders.