Contributions of metalinguistic awareness and lexical inference to reading comprehension in upper-elementary Chinese students

Background: The present study aimed to examine and compare the relative contributions of three facets of metalinguistic awareness (phonological awareness, orthographic awareness and morphological awareness) and lexical inferencing ability to Chinese reading comprehension across upper elementary grades. Method: Fifty-three third graders, 79 fourth graders and 108 fifth graders were administered a battery of tests including non-verbal intelligence, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, lexical inference and reading comprehension. Results: The multivariate analyses across grade groups revealed the continued progress in children's performances on morphological awareness but not on phonological and orthographic awareness. More important, hierarchical regressions exhibited the same pattern across grades, suggesting that morphological awareness was the sole consistent indicator of reading comprehension in all grades. Finally, lexical inferencing ability contributed to reading comprehension only in fifth-grade students after accounting for the effects of metalinguistic awareness. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of morphological awareness as the most potent meaning-building metalinguistic skill that can consistently predict Chinese reading comprehension in upper elementary children and indicate that the contribution of lexical inferencing ability differs as a function of children’s reading skills. Results were discussed in relation to the Reading Systems Framework and implications for educational instruction were provided.