Understanding the Microstructure and Macrostructure of Passages Among Chinese Elementary School Children
- Resource Type
- Original Paper
- Authors
- Lo, Lap-yan; Ho, Connie Suk-han; Wong, Yau-kai; Chan, David Wai-ock; Chung, Kevin Kien-hoa
- Source
- Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. December 2016 45(6):1287-1300
- Subject
- Discourse skills
Macrostructure
Microstructure
Reading comprehension
Syntactic skills
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 0090-6905
1573-6555
Understanding the microstructure and macrostructure of passages is important for reading comprehension. What cognitive-linguistic skills may contribute to understanding these two levels of structures has rarely been investigated. The present study examined whether some word-level and text-level cognitive-linguistic skills may contribute differently to the understanding of microstructure and macrostructure respectively. Seventy-nine Chinese elementary school children were tested on some cognitive-linguistic skills and literacy skills. It was found that word reading fluency and syntactic skills predicted significantly the understanding of microstructure of passages after controlling for age and IQ; while morphological awareness, syntactic skills, and discourse skills contributed significantly to understanding of macrostructure. These findings suggest that syntactic skills facilitate children’s access of meaning from grammatical structures, which is a fundamental process in gaining text meaning at any level of reading comprehension. Discourse skills also allow readers to understand the cohesive interlinks within and between sentences and is important for a macro level of passage understanding.