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This study investigated the Chinese metalinguistic awareness in elementary school childlren. There wer three main purposes:(1)Study One:the development of metalinguistic awareness (phonological awareness, tone awareness and morpheme awareness ) in elementary school students; (2)Study Two:the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and character recognition ability, and (3) Study Three:the training effects of metalinguistic awareness on Chinese characters recognition ability. Participants in Study One and Study Two were 117 children from the first to third grades. Study Three were 24 second graders whose percentile rank in “the Graded Chinese Characters Reading Test”(Huang, 1998) was lower than 30 percentile rank. The test materials in the research included:Phonological Awareness Test , Tone Awareness Test ,Morpheme Awareness Test, and the Graded Chinese Characters Reading Test. The results were summarized as follows: (1)The main effects of the grades on the phonological awareness and morpheme awareness were significant, but the effect on the tone awareness was not significant .The results showed that the abilities of phonology and morpheme were found to develop with grade level. (2)Metalinguistic awareness was signlificantly related to character recognition ability. (3)The results from the training study suggest that the metalinguistic awareness training can help children to raise subsequent metalinguistic awareness ability and character recognition ability.
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