The relative contributions of phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge to deaf and hearing children's reading fluency in Chinese.
For Chinese deaf readers, vocabulary remains the strongest predictor of reading fluency—focus vocabulary instruction first.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ying and team tested 180 Chinese kids in grades 3 and 5. Half were deaf, half could hear.
They gave each child three quick checks: how many words they knew, how well they played with sounds, and how fast they read a short story aloud.
The goal was to see which skill—word store or sound play—drove reading speed for each group.
What they found
Vocabulary won every time. Knowing lots of words predicted reading speed for deaf and hearing kids in both grades.
Sound skill mattered only for hearing third-graders. For deaf children, sound skill barely helped at any age.
In short, a bigger word bank beats sound games for Chinese deaf readers.
How this fits with other research
Domínguez et al. (2014) saw the same pattern in deaf adults: big vocab, weak sound use. Their adults used a “key word” skip-the-small-words tactic, so the child data now show the habit starts early.
Tsai et al. (2011) link attention problems to homophone spelling errors in hearing kids. Ying’s deaf kids did not lean on sound, so homophone traps may be less relevant for them—an apparent contradiction that makes sense once you see deaf readers skip sound entirely.
Almusawi et al. (2021) found deaf adults struggling with health texts. Weak vocabulary is likely a root cause, backing Ying’s call to build word store first.
Why it matters
If you teach deaf students who read Chinese, spend the bulk of your time on vocabulary—picture cards, signed definitions, and repeated exposure. Sound drills can wait, or even be dropped, because the data show they add little. Track words learned per week; that number will predict reading gains better than any phoneme score.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Swap 10 minutes of phoneme drills for 10 minutes of new-word review with pictures and signs.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: It is unclear whether phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are independent predictors of reading fluency for deaf children in different grades. AIMS: This study examined the relative contributions of phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge to Chinese deaf children's reading fluency in grades 3-4 (lower grades; mean age 14.08 years) and 5-6 (higher grades; mean age 15.05 years). METHODS AND PROCEDURES: One hundred and forty-one deaf children and 163 hearing children were enrolled. All children completed assessments of general cognitive ability, onset and tone awareness, vocabulary knowledge and reading fluency. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The results showed that for lower-grade deaf children, the unique effect of onset awareness on reading fluency was not statistically significant, but it was an independent predictor in higher grades; for lower-grade hearing children, onset awareness accounted for variance in reading fluency, but its effect was not significant in higher grades. No significant effect of tone awareness was found in deaf or hearing children. However, vocabulary knowledge significantly explained the variance in reading fluency for all subgroups. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The predictive patterns of phonological awareness on reading fluency are complex and depend on many factors, while vocabulary knowledge is an important and consistent predictor for both deaf and hearing children.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2019.103444