Performance on Literacy Measures: Year 2

Table 4.5 presents the descriptive statistics of the measures administered in Year 2.

Table 4.5 Performance on literacy tasks in Year 2

Measure Mean SD Min—Max N

Reading accuracy of ZF_Y2(24) 12.72 (53%) 3.26 3-21 92

Reading accuracy of character (24) 13.51 (56%) 2.93 5-21 91

Character recognition* 55.45 13.76 29-90 92

Character legality judgement_speed (sec) 58.69 13.27 32-110 92 Character legality Judgement_accuracy (20) 17.29 (86%) 1.98 9-20 92 Reading comprehension 60.49* 6.09 32-66 92

School-wide literacy exam (100) 94.98 (95%) 5.33 62-100 92

Note: Maximum score and accurate percentage of mean score for each measure are presented in parentheses when they are available. *: T score (mean = 50, SD = 10)

ZF and Character Reading Accuracy

In Year 2, both the ZF reading accuracy task and the character reading accuracy task sharing the same design were administered. Both are speed-accuracy tasks. Accuracy performance on the Chinese character task was slightly yet significantly better than on the ZF task: t (90) = 2.57, p = .012. Since materials in both ZF and character tests were pictures of high-frequency nouns, this difference may possibly be attributed to the accessing and/or processing of the diverse orthography systems; that is, processing semi-syllabary ZF letters into words took a longer time than processing

morpho-syllabic characters.

Table 4.6 presents the descriptive statistics of two types of errors, visual and phono-lexical, on ZF and CH reading accuracy tasks in Year 2. Comparisons of the errors between two types of distracters, visual and phono-lexical, on the ZF and CH reading accuracy tasks by the Wilcoxon signed ranks test showed significantly more visual errors than phono-lexical errors on both tasks (ZF: Z = 3.91, p < .001; CH: Z = 3.80, p < .001).

Table 4.6 Errors on ZF and CH reading in Year 2

Mean Std. Deviation Min- Max N ZF_ phono-lexical .47 .81 0-4 91

ZF_visual .92 .91 0-5 91

CH_ phono-lexical .77 1.01 0-5 91

CH_visual 1.47 1.41 0-5 91

Moreover, comparisons of phono-lexical and visual errors between ZF and CH reading accuracy tasks were conducted. The results showed that both phono-lexical and visual errors were made significantly more often on the CH task than on the ZF task (phono-lexical: Z = 2.42, p < .05; visual: Z = 3.73, p < .00). The results imply that Grade 2 children (average age: 7.7), after a year of literacy education, were more easily distracted by visual than phonological input, no matter what kind of

orthography they read. Phonological decoding seemed to be no longer an influential processing. In addition, more errors were made, no matter which type of errors, in the CH reading accuracy task than the ZF task. This implies that CH is a relatively more difficult orthography to identify correctly than ZF for children at Grade 2.

beginning of the ZF course (Y1_pr), after the ten-week ZF course (Y1_po), and a year later (Year 2). Table 4.7 presents the mean and effect size across these three

measurements.

Table 4.7 Mean and effect size of ZF reading accuracy (Max=24) across three

time points

Time point Mean SD Cohen’s d

Year 1 before ZF course 9.03 3.25 Year 1 after ZF course 12.13 3.40

Year 2 12.72 3.26

Compare Y1_pr* & Y1_po** 0.93

Compare Y1_pr & Year 2 1.13

Compare Y1_po & Year 2 0.18

* Y1_pr: Year 1 and before ZF course ; ** Y1_po: Year 1 and after ZF course

In order to know whether these changes were statistically significant or not, repeated measured ANOVA was taken to examine the difference in ZF reading accuracy at the three time points. Mauchly’s test indicated that the variances of differences among the above measurements at three time points were not significantly different (χ2 (2) = 1.08, p > .05). In addition, the results showed that performance on ZF reading accuracy was significantly influenced by the length of time of schooling (F (2,172) = 59.86, p < .00). Post hoc tests showed that performance on ZF reading accuracy after ZF course

( Y1_po) and T3 were statistically better than performance on ZF reading accuracy before ZF course(p < .001). However, no difference was observed between

performance on ZF reading accuracy after ZF course in Year 1 and Year 2 (p =.53).

According to the above results, the children’s ZF reading accuracy improved

same level for a year whilst they were continuously exposed to ZF orthography in literacy education.

Character Recognition

For the Character recognition task, the cohort performed moderately better (M = 55.45) and showed greater variability (SD = 13.76) compared to the population norms (M = 50, SD = 10) (d = 0.45).

According to the average score, children performed better on character recognition in Year 2. A paired t-test was used to compare the difference in performance within individuals. It showed a significant but small improvement from Year 1 to Year 2: t = 3.08, p <.01, d = .23.

Character Legality Judgement

Performance on the legality judgement task in the year 2 sample (M = 86.45%) was very similar to that reported by Wang, Perfetti and Liu (2005) in their Grade 2 sample (M = 86.6).

The design of the tasks included two subtasks: (a) position of radicals, and (b) stroke arrangement of radicals. Table 4.8 presents the descriptive statistics related to these subtasks. A paired samples t-test showed that children did better on judgements about form (b) than judgements about position (a), both in terms of accuracy (t = 7.66, p < .01) and speed (t = 8.56, p <.01). The results suggest that the sequence of character knowledge acquisition is that the form of radicals is acquired before the structure of characters.

Table 4.8 Descriptive statistics for the subtasks of character legality judgement

Measure Mean SD Min—Max N Position_speed (sec) 64.24 17.62 32-136 92 Form_speed (sec) 53.14 10.90 31-83 92 Position_accuracy (20) 16.20 (81%) 2.42 9-20 92 Form_accuracy (20) 18.38 (92 %) 2.40 4-20 92

Note: Maximum score and accurate percentage of mean score for each measure are presented in parentheses when they are available.

Reading Comprehension

The published test adopted for reading comprehension was originally designed for year 1 pupils (average age 6.7) since this task was administered only one and a half months after the beginning of the second school year. This may explain partly why the average performance of the cohort was higher than the norm by more than 1 SD. However, in another way, for those children performing at the lower end of this cohort, it was even more possible that they did lag behind and might have some difficulty on those literacy skills related to reading comprehension. This issue will be discussed in more detail later in Chapter 6.

4.1.3 The Impact of Background Factors on Literacy Measures