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In the present study, the participants’ character-recognition skills – considered as an aspect of lower-level processing – were measured by the ortho-phonological, ortho-semantic, and morpheme subtests. In the SEM measurement model of character recognition, ortho- phonology, ortho-semantics, and morpheme processing were significantly correlated with character-recognition processing, and this echoes the findings of L1 Chinese reading studies (e.g., Cheung et al., 2007; Li et al., 2002; Shu et al., 2003; Tong, 2008). The results also showed that character-recognition skills were most highly correlated with morphology processing (0.73), followed by ortho-semantics processing (0.54) and ortho-phonology processing (0.42). This high correlation of morphology processing with character-recognition was also similar to the findings of L1 Chinese reading studies (Hu, 2013; Ku, 2000, Li et al., 2002; Tong, 2008), and suggests that morphology processing may be a more sensitive indicator of character-recognition ability than sub-character processing skills are – especially in light of Tong’s (2008) finding that the importance of morphology processing increases as L1 reading ability develops. Moreover, my participants’ morpheme skill was significantly correlated with their other character-recognition and comprehension skills (see Table 23), and its high factor loading in the EFA results (Table 23) indicates its crucial role in L2 Chinese reading. In light of the beneficial effect of home language use on real character naming identified by Lü and Koda (2011), it is reasonable to argue that morpheme skill plays a more crucial role than ortho-phonology skill in transforming knowledge of oral Chinese into reading ability.

Moreover, Tong (2008) found that sub-character processing emerges as an individual latent variable for beginning L1 readers, and then clusters with morpheme processing for advanced L1 readers. Tong explained that the emergence of sub-character-processing may be

due to an instruction effect. Specifically, when being instructed by compound characters

comprising of ortho-phonological and ortho-semantic components with reliable phonological and semantic cues, beginning L1 readers learn to actively process sub-character information. The convergence with morpheme processing may be related to later instruction covering compound characters with less reliable ortho-phonological and ortho-semantic components, which could lead a student to depend less on sub-character processing. The lower factor loadings of the two types of sub-character processing identified in this study may also reflect an instruction effect, insofar as most Chinese characters in textbooks do not have reliable sub-character cues, and instructors may focus on whole characters more than on sub-character components.

When comparing the factor loadings of ortho-phonology and ortho-semantics, the latter’s higher correlation with the latent variable of character-recognition ability was also reported in studies of L1 Chinese reading (Cheung et al., 2007; Tong, 2008). Cheung and her colleagues found that ortho-phonology and ortho-semantics skills shared 10% and 12%, respectively, of the total variance in reading comprehension among L1 readers. In the current study, the shared variances between ortho-phonology processing and passage comprehension were 13%, and between ortho-semantics processing and passage-comprehension, 23%. This indicates that processing the sub-character level of semantic information may share more cognitive

mechanisms with general-comprehension processing than processing the sub-character level of phonemic information.

In Tong’s (2008) study, the factor loading of ortho-phonology skills starts from 0.51 for L1 pre-readers and drops to 0.35 for advanced L1 readers, whereas the factor loading of ortho- semantics skills remains stable at around 0.50 across the three examined age groups. Similarly, in the present study, ortho-phonology and ortho-semantics skills shared 13% and 23%,

respectively, of the total variance with the passage-comprehension subtest; and the factor loadings of ortho-phonology and ortho-semantics skills were 0.41 and 0.51, respectively. The similarities between L1 readers and the participants in the current study could suggest that, like L1 Chinese children, Chinese-language learners are able to utilize ortho-phonological and ortho- semantic information to learn Chinese characters.

Scholars investigating reading development in the context of alphabetic orthographies have identified the decoding of ortho-phonological information as crucial (Morais, 1999; Stanovich, 2000). However, studies of bilingual Chinese children (Cheung et al., 2007; Chow, 2014; Hu 2013) suggest that ortho-phonology processing is less important in Chinese than in English, and that when reading in Chinese, it is also less important than ortho-semantics processing. In addition, the CFLLs studied by Shen (2010) had more difficulty connecting graphemes with phonemes than connecting graphemes with meanings. Along the same line, English-dominant participants in the same study exhibited lower loadings of ortho-phonology processing than of ortho-semantics processing: indicating that English-dominant readers are able to adjust their lower-level processing skills to an orthography very different from that of their dominant language. This processing adjustment would tend to support the concept of multi- competence proposed by Cook (2002): i.e., that bi/multi-linguals develop different skills from their monolingual peers, and that their adaptability to various languages suggests a powerful cognitive ability to choose the most efficient way to process languages, rather than passively relying on the cognitive ability developed through L1 acquisition (see also Cook, 2015). 5.3 Comprehension Skills in L2 Chinese Reading

Comprehension skills, as an aspect of higher-level processing, were measured by the grammar, cloze, and passage-comprehension subtests, targeting the lexical, syntactical, and

discourse levels of comprehension. In the measurement model of reading, the passage-

comprehension subtest had the highest factor loading, although the other two subtests also had relatively high correlations with the latent variable of reading comprehension ability. These high factor loadings suggest that the comprehension skills elicited by the three subtests were highly correlated with reading-comprehension ability as a construct: a similar result to Purpura’s (1999) regarding the construct of reading ability.

5.4 The Relationship between Character-Recognition and Comprehension Skills