Development of syntactic awareness in Chinese children

Abstract

The present study examined the development of syntactic awareness in Chinese children. Different aspects of syntactic awareness were investigated among 237 Chinese children in Grade 2 to Grade 5 in Hong Kong. Results suggest that syntactic awareness develops through 3 stages and significantly predicts reading comprehension in each stage. Stage 1 involves a rapid development of different syntactic knowledge. Stage 2 represents a consolidation phase in which the significance of syntactic knowledge in reading comprehension subsides, pathing the way for the development of more advanced syntactic knowledge in Stage 3. Among the different syntactic processing skills, transformation of active and passive sentences is the easiest to acquire and thus it plays an important role in reading comprehension in stage 1. Recognition of sentence parts is more complex and difficult and thus it develops and influences reading comprehension in stage 3.