Reading Comprehension of Chinese-Speaking Children With Hearing Loss: The Roles of Metalinguistic Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge

Purpose: This study aims to explore the contributions of phonological aware-ness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA) to the reading comprehension skills of Chinese-speaking children with hearing loss (HL) and examine the pos-sible mediation effect of vocabulary knowledge on the relationships of PA and MA with their reading comprehension.Method: The participants were 28 Chinese-speaking children with HL, who were followed from Grade 1 through Grade 2. They were administered a series of tests that measured their PA and MA at the beginning of Grade 1, vocabulary knowl-edge at the end of Grade 1, and reading comprehension at the end of Grade 2.Results: MA significantly accounted for additional variance in reading compre-hension beyond the effect of PA but not vice versa. Both PA and MA contrib-uted uniquely to vocabulary knowledge, which completely mediated the rela-tionships of PA and MA with reading comprehension.Conclusions: PA and MA are both essential to the development of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children with HL; however, MA seems to be more important than PA in their reading comprehen-sion. PA and MA significantly affect children's reading comprehension through their influence on vocabulary knowledge. This study has replicated previous evi-dence on the importance of PA, MA, and vocabulary knowledge in the reading comprehension of children with typical hearing, and has extended its signifi-cance to children with HL. In addition, the findings have the potential to inform educational practitioners regarding the importance of teaching essential reading skills to Chinese-speaking children with HL.