The relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading fluency in elementary school children: The mediating role of character recognition and vocabulary knowledge

Abstract

Reading is an important skill and an effective way for individuals to obtain information. In the field of reading development, reading fluency, as an essential indicator of children’s reading ability development, has gradually attracted researchers’ attention. According to the Multidimensional View of Reading Fluency, reading fluency involves integrating cognitive skills related to reading, such as phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness. The processing of low–level cognitive skills is an integral part of reading fluency. In addition, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at the word level also play a vital role in children’s reading fluency development. However, few studies have explored the possible relationship between metalinguistic awareness, Chinese character recognition, vocabulary knowledge, and reading fluency. Therefore, to comprehensively investigate the predictive factors and mechanism of the low–grade primary school children’s reading fluency, the study intended to incorporate phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness into a systematic model to explore the relationship between three metalinguistic awareness and reading fluency, and the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. 149 primary school children were followed up three times a year, with their phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness measured at Time 1 (fall semester of Grade 1), Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 (spring semester of Grade 1), and word reading fluency and silent reading fluency at Time 3 (fall semester of Grade 2). In addition, rapid naming and general cognitive ability were all measured as control variables at Time1 (fall semester of Grade 1). Spearman correlation analysis was established to investigate the correlation between variables. The structural equation model (SEM) was established to investigate the predictive effect of metalinguistic awareness on reading fluency and the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. The results showed that: (1) phonological awareness directly predicted word reading fluency. (2) orthographic awareness not only directly predicted word reading fluency and silent reading fluency but also predicted word reading fluency and silent reading fluency through Chinese character recognition. (3) Morphological awareness significantly predicted silent reading fluency in second grade, promoted word reading fluency through Chinese character recognition, and indirectly predicted silent reading fluency through the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. The findings provide a reference basis for systematically investigating the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading fluency among Chinese children and provide theoretical guidance for improving children’s reading fluency skills.