Chinese Kindergartners Learn to Read Characters Analytically

Abstract

Do Chinese children implicitly extract information from Chinese print before they are formally taught to read? We examined Chinese kindergartners’ sensitivity to regularities in Chinese characters and the relationship between such sensitivity and later literacy ability. Eighty-five kindergartners from Beijing were given a character-learning task and assessed on word reading and word writing twice within a 1-year interval. Sensitivity to the structural and phonetic regularities in Chinese appeared in 4-year-olds, and sensitivity to the positions of radicals in Chinese characters emerged in 5-year-olds. Such sensitivities explained unique variance in Chinese word reading and writing 1 year later, with age and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. Young children detected regularities in written Chinese before they received formal instruction in it, which underscores both the importance of early statistical learning for literacy development and the analytic properties of Chinese print.