Journal Papers by Dongbo Zhang
Transfer Facilitation of Metalinguistic Awareness in Word Reading Among Dual Language Learners of English: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Study
Review of Educational Research, 2025
This article reports the first meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling study that examined the... more This article reports the first meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling study that examined the within- and cross-language relations of three metalinguistic awareness skills (orthographic, phonological, and morphological awareness, or OA, PA, and MA) with word reading among school-aged dual language learners (DLLs) of English. Based on 156 primary studies (N = 23,371), we found that (1) OA, PA, and MA each uniquely predicted word reading within first language (L1) and second language (L2); (2) L1 OA, PA, and MA predicted their corresponding skill in L2, showing a construct-level transfer facilitation effect; (3) for cross-over transfer, L1 PA, as opposed to L1 OA and MA, predicted L2 word reading, but their indirect effects on L2 word reading were all significant. Moderator analysis was conducted on L1 background (Chinese vs. non-Chinese); L2 learning context (ESL vs. EFL); and developmental stage (younger vs. older). We discuss the transfer facilitation effects of L1 metalinguistic awareness skills that can be leveraged for effective and differentiated instruction for DLLs.
Review of Education, 2024
This paper presents the first systematic review and meta-analysis on cross-linguistic correlation... more This paper presents the first systematic review and meta-analysis on cross-linguistic correlations between sign language and spoken/written language competences in bilingual d/Deaf learners. A total of 202 effect sizes were identified based on 70 independent samples that appeared in 52 studies from 1981 to 2023 (N = 3570). The effect sizes involved seven sign language correlates (e.g., fingerspelling, phonological awareness [PA], lexico-semantic knowledge) and eight spoken/written language correlates (e.g., PA, lexico-semantic knowledge, word reading, reading comprehension). Estimated mean correlations of 26 cross-linguistic relationships ranged from r = 0.322 (p < 0.001) for sign language PA and reading comprehension to r = 0.645 (p < 0.001) for fingerspelling and word reading. Among other moderators, age/grade (elementary, secondary, vs. university/adult), signer status (native vs. non-native), program type (bilingual vs. Total Communication/SimCom), and task type (passage vs. sentence comprehension) either showed significant moderation effects or resulted in differing size (small, medium vs. large) in the correlation coefficients among subgroups of primary studies. The meta-analytic findings lend support to the legitimate application of linguistic interdependence, common underlying proficiency, cross-linguistic transfer facilitation, and their associated constructs to the educational development of signing/bimodal bilingual learners. The moderator analysis results, in particular, have shed light on the conditioning of linguistic interdependence and transfer and expanded current understandings about the complexity of the issue and its practical implications in bilingual deaf education.
Different aspects of vocabulary depth knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Comparing higher- and lower-proficiency readers
Foreign Language Annals, 2023
Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., breadth and depth) are widely acknowledged as key pre... more Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., breadth and depth) are widely acknowledged as key predictors of reading comprehension in a second language (L2). However, it remains unclear how different aspects of vocabulary depth may independently contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how learners' proficiency may moderate the relative contributions of vocabulary knowledge. Based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis and the Reading Systems Framework, this study investigated 238 L2 Chinese learners who were college-level students in China, using a set of reading-related tasks. The results showed that (1) vocabulary breadth and grammatical knowledge independently contributed to L2 reading comprehension with grammatical knowledge being a more deciding factor; (2) different aspects of vocabulary depth (i.e., polysemy and synonymy), over and above vocabulary breadth and grammatical knowledge, played an independent role; and (3) more importantly, lower-proficiency learners relied more on vocabulary breadth whereas higher-proficiency learners made more use of vocabulary depth during text-level comprehension.
Lexical ability in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: path analysis comparing higher- and lower-proficiency learners
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 2023
Lexical ability, an umbrella term to cover various knowledge and skills pertaining to words in pr... more Lexical ability, an umbrella term to cover various knowledge and skills pertaining to words in print, is a key component in reading comprehension. Little is known how different facets of lexical ability jointly contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how the contributions may differ between higher- and lower-proficiency L2 learners. This study, based on 201 adults who had studied Chinese in China, explored direct and indirect effects of distinct facets of lexical ability on L2 reading comprehension. The participants completed three paper-pencil tasks that measured three facets of lexical ability, that is, morphological awareness, character knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge. Their short-term memory, grammatical knowledge, and reading comprehension were also measured. Separate sets of path analysis showed that higher- and lower-proficiency learners had distinct patterns of relationships. Whereas higher-proficiency learners relied more on morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension, lower-proficiency learners drew largely upon their character knowledge.
Education Sciences, 2022
We investigated a technology-based tool for teaching English letter-sound correspondences with bi... more We investigated a technology-based tool for teaching English letter-sound correspondences with bilingual children learning phonologically and typologically distant languages: English and Chinese. We expect that learning about print at the phoneme level may be particularly challenging, given children’s experience with the morphosyllabic language of Chinese. This randomized-controlled study with 90 kindergarteners examined the effects of an iPad-based supplementary reading program compared with a control condition. The See Word Reading® program utilized picture-embedded cues for teaching phonics within lessons directed at the letter, word, and text levels. Measures of decoding, word reading, and spelling were taken at the pretest, posttest, and follow-up for both groups. Results showed better gains in word reading for the reading group, indicating the positive impact of this supplementary reading tool. Further, data collected online from the app showed that different types of letter-sound pairings were more challenging to learn, including pairings that are inconsistent and with phonemes that are specific to English.
Frontiers in Education, 2022
Recognition of individual words serves as an initial basis for comprehension of a written text; y... more Recognition of individual words serves as an initial basis for comprehension of a written text; yet there are complex word-to-text (WTT) integration processes underlying the comprehension. This study focused on two components of WTT integration, that is, syntactic parsing and semantic association, and assessed how syntactic and semantic network knowledge differentially predicted two types of text comprehension (literal vs. inferential) in second language readers. Participants were 229 adult learners of English language as a foreign language at a Saudi University. A battery of tasks was administrated to measure their reading comprehension, syntactic knowledge (grammatical error correction), and semantic network knowledge (semantic association), together with working memory and vocabulary knowledge/size. Multiple regression analyses showed that both syntactic and semantic network knowledge significantly predicted reading comprehension (disregarding the type of comprehension), controlling for working memory and vocabulary knowledge. Syntactic knowledge, as opposed to semantic network knowledge, was a significant, unique predictor of literal comprehension, whereas a converse pattern was found for inferential comprehension.
The Lexical Basis of Second Language Reading Comprehension: From (Sub)Lexical Knowledge to Processing Efficiency
Language Learning
This study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as proc... more This study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as processing skills at both word/lexical and sublexical/ morphological levels, collectively and relatively predict reading comprehension in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were 220 Arabic speaking EFL learners in a Saudi university. A battery of paper- and computer-based tests was administered to measure the participants’ lexical competences, reading comprehension ability, and working memory. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that over and above working memory, both lexical and sublexical knowledge were significant and unique predictors of reading comprehension, and sublexical processing efficiency, as opposed to lexical processing efficiency, predicted reading comprehension significantly. In addition, among the measured lexical competences, lexical knowledge was the strongest predictor, and the two knowledge variables collectively had a far greater influence on reading comprehension than did the two processing efficiency variables. These findings are discussed in light of the lexical basis of text comprehension.
This study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as proc... more This study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as processing skills at both word/lexical and sublexical/ morphological levels, collectively and relatively predict reading comprehension in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were 220 Arabicspeaking EFL learners in a Saudi university. A battery of paper-and computer-based tests was administered to measure the participants' lexical competences, reading comprehension ability, and working memory. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that over and above working memory, both lexical and sublexical knowledge were significant and unique predictors of reading comprehension, and sublexical processing efficiency, as opposed to lexical processing efficiency, predicted reading comprehension significantly. In addition, among the measured lexical competences, lexical knowledge was the strongest predictor, and the two knowledge variables collectively had a far greater influence on reading comprehension than did the two processing efficiency variables. These findings are discussed in light of the lexical basis of text comprehension.
Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching
This scoping review explores the causal relationship between morphological instruction and readin... more This scoping review explores the causal relationship between morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 learners by synthesizing 12 primary studies published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 1,535). These studies focused on reading English as the target language and involved participants between kindergarten and Grade 12 from four countries (China, Egypt, Singapore, and the USA). Findings suggested that (a) morphological instruction led to consistent and positive gains in L2 children's morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, and the effect sizes (Cohen's ds) ranged from small to large; and (b) the relationship between morphological instruction and other outcomes such as phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension was inconclusive. Notably, transfer effects of L2 English morphological instruction on novel word learning in English or on reading development in an additional language were only examined and observed in four primary studies. Discussion was provided regarding future instructional and research design.
Research in Language and Education: An International Journal [RILE], 2021
Little research has been conducted on self and peer assessment (hereafter, SA and PA) in Chinese ... more Little research has been conducted on self and peer assessment (hereafter, SA and PA) in Chinese language education in the United States, despite the fact that both forms of assessment have multiple benefits for language learning and it is argued they should be an integral component of language teachers' repertoire of classroom assessment. Particularly, little is known about Chinese language teachers' perceptions of SA and PA and their classroom SA and PA practices. To address this knowledge gap, this study aimed at exploring Chinese language teachers' perceptions and implementation of SA and PA and establishing a ground for future research in this field. Using a qualitative methodology, we interviewed ten K-12 Chinese language teachers in US schools. By examining the interview responses of those teachers, this study revealed some important findings. Notably, all the teachers realized the benefits of SA and PA for student learning. Yet, there was rare use of them in most teachers' classrooms. We discussed this gap by drawing upon the probed responses of the teachers as well as our inferences. The findings of this study inform SA and PA of Chinese language in K-12 classrooms and professional development for Chinese language teachers in US schools.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesize the findings in the literature on the rela... more The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesize the findings in the literature on the relative contribution of two types of linguistic knowledge (i. e., vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) to L2 reading comprehension; and to discuss the possible factors that might have led to the complexity and incongruity of the research findings. Nineteen studies were identified for this review through a systematic process of selection, and were analyzed in terms of the relationship of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge with L2 reading comprehension and their relative significance. The result of this review showed that there was no clear evidence supporting which type of linguistic knowledge is more contributive than the other; and the inconclusive findings might be attributed to the variations in the design of the studies. Two factors emerged, including participants' language proficiency and construct definition, operatio-nalization, and measurement. Some considerations for future research are suggested. Reading comprehension is a constructive process whereby the reader creates a mental representation of the meaning of a text while multiple factors-text, reader, and activity-mutually interact (RAND Reading Study Group 2002). In this process, the reader first accesses word meanings, integrates pieces of syntactic information, and builds local and global coherence (i. e., the text base model; Van Dijk and Kintsch 1983); this is followed by connecting and integrating information from the text with the reader's relevant prior knowledge, which allows deeper comprehension (i. e., the situation model; Van Dijk and
Language Learning, 2021
This study examined the crosslinguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy dev... more This study examined the crosslinguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy development. The analysis included 34 correlational studies with 41 independent samples (N = 4,104). Correlational coefficients were meta-analyzed, yielding four main findings: (a) the correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) MA was small (r = .30); (b) the interlingual correlations between L1 MA and L2 word decoding and between L1 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both small (r = .35, .39, respectively); (c) the intralingual correlations between L2 MA and L2 word decoding and between L2 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both moderate (r = .46, .52, respectively); and (d) MA measurement type and age were significant moderators. Our review suggests that there is a need for future research to align the definition and measurement of MA.
Reading Research Quarterly
The authors examined the complexity of the simple view of reading, focusing on morphological deco... more The authors examined the complexity of the simple view of reading, focusing on morphological decoding fluency in fourth‐grade readers of English in Singapore. The participants were three groups of students who all learned to become bilingual and biliterate in the English language (EL) and their respective ethnic language in school but differed in the home language they used. The first group was ethnic Chinese students who used English as the dominant home language (Chinese EL1); the other two groups were ethnic Chinese and Malay students whose dominant home language was not English but Chinese (Chinese EL2) and Malay (Malay EL2), respectively. The measures included pseudoword decoding (phonemic decoding), timed decoding of derivational words (morphological decoding fluency), oral vocabulary, and passage comprehension. Path analysis showed that oral vocabulary significantly predicted reading comprehension across all three groups, yet a significant effect of morphological decoding fluency surfaced in the Chinese EL1 and Malay EL2 groups but not the Chinese EL2 group. Multigroup path analysis and commonality analysis further confirmed that morphological decoding played a larger role in the Chinese EL1 and Malay EL2 groups. These findings are discussed in light of the joint influence of target‐language experience and cross‐linguistic influence on second‐language or bilingual reading development.
The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesize the findings in the literature on the rela... more The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesize the findings in the literature on the relative contribution of two types of linguistic knowledge (i. e., vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) to L2 reading comprehension; and to discuss the possible factors that might have led to the complexity and incongruity of the research findings. Nineteen studies were identified for this review through a systematic process of selection, and were analyzed in terms of the relationship of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge with L2 reading comprehension and their relative significance. The result of this review showed that there was no clear evidence supporting which type of linguistic knowledge is more contributive than the other; and the inconclusive findings might be attributed to the variations in the design of the studies. Two factors emerged, including participants’ language proficiency and construct definition, operationalization, and measurement. Some considerations for future research are suggested.
This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic c... more This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic choice and orthographic choice in context), syntactic processing (grammaticality and sentence integrity), and verbal working memory (two reading span indicators) to written Chinese composition (narration, explanation, and argumentation) in 129 fifteen-year-old L2 learners. A matrix task was also administered as a control task to tap cognitive flexibility. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis with written composition as a latent variable revealed orthographic processing and working memory as two significant, independent contributors, whereas the unique contribution of syntactic processing was not significant. Subsequent SEM analysis with narration, explanation, and argumentation as separate endogenous variables found varied patterns of the contribution of each latent predictor to written composition in different genres. These patterns are discussed in light of the importance of attention to learners’ developmental stage and genre-sensitive measures to capture the psycholinguistic and cognitive underpinnings of written composition in L2 Chinese.
Background: While much is known about how morphological awareness (MA) contributes to reading dev... more Background: While much is known about how morphological awareness (MA) contributes to reading development, little attention has been paid to how reading may conversely affect MA development, particularly in readers of Chinese in a bilingual/multilingual setting.
Methods: The study adopted a cross-lagged panel design. Young bilingual readers of Chinese were measured in MA, word reading and reading comprehension – all in Chinese – twice from Grade 3 to Grade 4.
Results: Path analysis revealed that Grade 3 MA significantly predicted Grade 4 reading comprehension after controlling for the autoregressive effect. Over and above Grade 3 MA, Grade 3 reading also significantly predicted Grade 4 MA. Subsequent analyses, however, revealed disparate developmental patterns between those with Chinese and English, respectively, as their home language.
Implications: These findings, while supporting reciprocity of developmental relationships between MA and reading, also suggested that the pattern of relationships can vary as a function of students’ target language experiences in a bilingual/multilingual setting.
Computer Assisted Language Learning
Though pedagogical beliefs have been identified as critical factors in the success of technology ... more Though pedagogical beliefs have been identified as critical factors in the success of technology integration, very few studies have included them in technology-adoption models. The present study revises the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by adding teachers’ pedagogical beliefs, and tests the revised model among university-level English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in China. Specifically, the revised model examines how teachers’ constructivist and/or transmissive pedagogical beliefs influence four key constructs of the TAM: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward use, and intention to use. Survey data were collected from 202 Chinese EFL teachers and analyzed using path analysis. The revised model showed a good model fit. The results indicated that the sampled teachers’ pedagogical beliefs were more constructivist-oriented than transmissive-oriented, and that the former type of beliefs had a significant positive influence on three of the above-mentioned TAM constructs (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude toward use). Teachers’ transmissive pedagogical beliefs, on the other hand, did not have any significant impact on their attitudes toward information and communication technology (ICT) or their perceptions of its usefulness, though such beliefs did significantly affect their perceptions of how easy ICT was to use. Implications of these findings for teacher education and professional training are discussed.
This study examined the similarities and differences in the functioning of component processes un... more This study examined the similarities and differences in the functioning of component processes underlying first language (L1) and second language (L2) word reading in Chinese. Fourth-grade Chinese children in Singapore were divided into L1 and L2 reader groups based on whether they used Mandarin or English as their home language. Both groups were administered a battery of tasks that assessed their orthographic processing skill (OP), phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as the ability to decode characters and multi-character compound words. Separate Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analyses showed that in the L1 group, over and above all other variables, both OP and MA, as opposed to PA, were significant predictors of word reading, whereas in the L2 group, OP and PA, as opposed to MA, predicted word reading. Multiple-group SEM analysis further revealed that the effects of OP and MA were significantly larger in the L1 than in the L2 group, whereas a converse pattern was found for PA. These findings are discussed in light of the linguistic and language-to-print mapping properties of Chinese as well as the influence of L1 and L2 learners' differential experience on how they learn to read in Chinese.
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Journal Papers by Dongbo Zhang
Methods: The study adopted a cross-lagged panel design. Young bilingual readers of Chinese were measured in MA, word reading and reading comprehension – all in Chinese – twice from Grade 3 to Grade 4.
Results: Path analysis revealed that Grade 3 MA significantly predicted Grade 4 reading comprehension after controlling for the autoregressive effect. Over and above Grade 3 MA, Grade 3 reading also significantly predicted Grade 4 MA. Subsequent analyses, however, revealed disparate developmental patterns between those with Chinese and English, respectively, as their home language.
Implications: These findings, while supporting reciprocity of developmental relationships between MA and reading, also suggested that the pattern of relationships can vary as a function of students’ target language experiences in a bilingual/multilingual setting.