Understanding the Microstructure and Macrostructur

Authors: Lapyan Lo Connie Sukhan Ho Yaukai Wong David Waiock Chan Kevin Kienhoa Chung

Publish Date: 2015/11/14

Volume: 45, Issue: 6, Pages: 1287-1300

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Abstract

Understanding the microstructure and macrostructure of passages is important for reading comprehension What cognitivelinguistic skills may contribute to understanding these two levels of structures has rarely been investigated The present study examined whether some wordlevel and textlevel cognitivelinguistic skills may contribute differently to the understanding of microstructure and macrostructure respectively Seventynine Chinese elementary school children were tested on some cognitivelinguistic 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

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