An Assessment of Chinese Adult Learners’ English Phonological Awareness

Abstract

The present study aims to conduct a valid comprehensive assessment of Chinese adult learners’ phonological awareness (PA) in English. To do so, 408 college students were classified into three groups based on their English proficiency; four tasks (oddity, segmentation, blending, and deletion) with varying complexity employed to test all three levels of PA (syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness, and phoneme awareness). The results revealed that 1) overall PA improved with English proficiency; 2) among four tasks, only the performances on oddity were not significantly affected by English proficiency; 3) English proficiency attained significance for all three levels of PA; and 4) in terms of subtest where task and PA interacted, English proficiency’s impact was mediated by the complexity of task and level of PA. This study is meant to guide PA researchers on a valid PA assessment and Chinese English teachers on PA training for their Chinese English learners.