Development of Mandarin onset-rime detection in relation to age and Pinyin instruction

Fei Chen, Nan Yan, Xunan Huang, Hao Zhang, Lan Wang, Gang Peng

Research output: Journal article publicationConference articleAcademic researchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Development of explicit phonological awareness (PA) is thought to be dependent on formal instruction in reading or spelling. However, the development of implicit PA emerges before literacy instruction and interacts with how the phonological representations are constructed within a certain language. The present study systematically investigated the development of implicit PA of Mandarin onset-rime detection in relation to age and Pinyin instruction, involving 70 four-to seven-year-old kindergarten and first-grade children. Results indicated that the overall rate of correct responses in the rime detection task was much higher than that in the onset detection one, with better discrimination ability of larger units. Moreover, the underlying factors facilitating the development of Mandarin onset and rime detection were different, although both correlated positively with Pinyin instruction. On one hand, with age, development of rime detection appeared to develop naturally through spoken language experience before schooling, and was further optimized to the best after Pinyin instruction. On the other hand, the accuracy of onset detection exhibited a drastic improvement, boosting from 66% among preschoolers to 93% among first graders, establishing the primacy of Pinyin instruction responsible for the development of implicit onset awareness in Mandarin.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)180-184
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
Volume08-12-September-2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2016
Event17th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2016 - Hyatt Regency San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
Duration: 8 Sept 201616 Sept 2016

Keywords

  • Age
  • Onset-rime detection
  • Phonological awareness
  • Pinyin instruction

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Signal Processing
  • Software
  • Modelling and Simulation

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Development of Mandarin onset-rime detection in relation to age and Pinyin instruction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this