Reading Strategies Revealed in Chinese Children’s Oral Reading

The purpose of this study was to examine the character identification strategies of Chinese children during their oral reading of a continuous text. Eighteen second graders’ oral reading of a story, as well as an interview about their decoding strategies, were audiotaped and transcribed. The results generally converged with those of previous oral reading research in alphabetic languages. Children, even poor readers, consistently used information available within characters and information from context to identify unfamiliar characters. This study suggests that Chinese children as young as second grade can apply appropriate strategies to decode their logographic writing system. In the interview after reading, children were able to describe their thinking processes while decoding unfamiliar characters. Their descriptions were usually consistent with behavior observed during oral reading, which indicates a high level of metalinguistic awareness.