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Association between Young Chinese Children's Early Writing Skills and the Chinese Preschool Classroom Writing Environment

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Title: Association between Young Chinese Children's Early Writing Skills and the Chinese Preschool Classroom Writing Environment
Language: English
Authors: Chenyi Zhang, Xiao Zhang, Gary E. Bingham, Liying Zhang
Source: Early Education and Development. 2025 36(1):102-128.
Availability: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 27
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Preschool Education
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Writing Skills, Preschools, Preschool Children, Classroom Environment, Writing Instruction, Accessibility (for Disabled), Chinese, Written Language, Oral Language, Beginning Writing, Instructional Materials, Access to Information, Barriers
Geographic Terms: China
DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2024.2360876
ISSN: 1040-9289
1556-6935
Abstract: This study describes the early writing environments of 16 preschool classrooms in China and 155 Chinese preschoolers' early writing skills as assessed through name writing, word dictation, and early composing tasks. The classroom early writing environment consists of children's accessibility to writing materials, and teachers' writing instruction. Preschool writing samples were coded for children's ability to generate both oral (e.g. number of words and ideas) and written language (e.g. recognizable Chinese characters). Confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical linear modeling were conducted to investigate the structure of Chinese preschoolers' writing skill and to examine its association with classroom writing environment. Research Findings: Results showed that Chinese preschool children could independently generate a variety of writing samples without adult support. Early Chinese writing skills represent two factors, namely (a) the ability to transcribe recognizable characters (transcription skill), and (b) the ability to generate meaningful ideas (composing skill). Teachers' writing instruction was significantly associated with children's writing skill, although the frequency was low. Practice or Policy: The findings revealed the evident complexities of Chinese orthography, while suggesting a universal impact of teachers' scaffolding to young children's early writing. The study prepared an evidence base for future classroom-based early literacy intervention programs.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1455744
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0181909711;h4j01jan.25;2024Dec31.02:22;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0181909711-1">Association Between Young Chinese Children's Early Writing Skills and the Chinese Preschool Classroom Writing Environment </title> <sbt id="AN0181909711-2">Introduction</sbt> <p>This study describes the early writing environments of 16 preschool classrooms in China and 155 Chinese preschoolers' early writing skills as assessed through name writing, word dictation, and early composing tasks. The classroom early writing environment consists of children's accessibility to writing materials, and teachers' writing instruction. Preschool writing samples were coded for children's ability to generate both oral (e.g. number of words and ideas) and written language (e.g. recognizable Chinese characters). Confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical linear modeling were conducted to investigate the structure of Chinese preschoolers' writing skill and to examine its association with classroom writing environment. Research Findings: Results showed that Chinese preschool children could independently generate a variety of writing samples without adult support. Early Chinese writing skills represent two factors, namely (a) the ability to transcribe recognizable characters (transcription skill), and (b) the ability to generate meaningful ideas (composing skill). Teachers' writing instruction was significantly associated with children's writing skill, although the frequency was low. Practice or Policy: The findings revealed the evident complexities of Chinese orthography, while suggesting a universal impact of teachers' scaffolding to young children's early writing. The study prepared an evidence base for future classroom-based early literacy intervention programs.</p> <p>Even before they receive formal literacy instruction, young children (ages three to five) demonstrate knowledge of written language, as evidenced by the marks that they make on paper which have meaning to them (Rowe & Neitzel, [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref1">72</reflink>]; Tolchinsky, [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref2">81</reflink>]). Such language patterns are observed across Chinese and English orthographies (Treiman & Kessler, [<reflink idref="bib87" id="ref3">87</reflink>]). Researchers also have documented that children are capable of differentiating drawing and writing as early as three years old and that children's writing development follows a sequential pattern, from scribbling to writing recognizable English letters or Chinese characters (Cabell et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref4">16</reflink>]; Chan & Louie, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref5">17</reflink>] Hall et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref6">30</reflink>]; Perfetti et al., [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref7">59</reflink>]; Treiman & Kessler, [<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref8">86</reflink>]). Studies of preschool children's writing in English demonstrate that children are motivated from an early age to experiment with writing tools and that they can orally compose their ideas and link these ideas in meaningful ways to marks on a page (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref9">69</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref10">74</reflink>]). Although children's earliest writing attempts reflect limited conventionality in that young preschool aged children (typically) do not produce well formed letters or spell accurately the words or ideas they want to produce, children in preschool do learn to write their names and many begin to produce estimated or invented spellings to capture initial sounds in words (Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref11">62</reflink>]). The ability to produce this writing is learned in various social cultural contexts (e.g., classroom, and home environment) and is linked concurrently and longitudinally to the development of reading skills (Aram, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref12">1</reflink>]; Diamond et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref13">21</reflink>]; National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref14">56</reflink>]). Despite the limited studies of Chinese children's writing in early childhood, researchers have noted associations between children's skills of writing recognizable Chinese characters and their early reading skills, including morphological awareness, Pinyin knowledge, and radical awareness (McBride, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref15">49</reflink>]; Zhang, Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref16">106</reflink>]). In this study, we explored the structure of Chinese preschoolers' early writing skills and their association with their experiences within classroom writing environment that we captured by observing (a) the presence of writing materials and environmental and (b) early childhood teachers' writing focused interactions/practices.</p> <p>Emergent literacy theory (Whitehurst & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib96" id="ref17">96</reflink>]) clearly articulates the importance of early writing skills to children's literacy development. This importance has contributed to the inclusion of handwriting, spelling, and composing skills indicators in US early childhood learning standards (Tortorelli et al., [<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref18">84</reflink>]) as well as researchers examining how a variety of social cultural contexts support the acquisition of these various early writing skills. For example, studies in the United States and Scandinavian contexts have described children's writing experiences in preschool classrooms (Gabas et al., [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref19">24</reflink>]; Hofslundsengen et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref20">32</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib108" id="ref21">108</reflink>]) and examined how these experiences relate to their acquisition of handwriting and estimated spelling (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref22">8</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref23">27</reflink>]). These studies consistently suggest that children's exposure to classroom writing environments that have a dedicated and well-stocked writing center, varied writing tools and materials, and useful environmental print predicts writing growth across the preschool years (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref24">27</reflink>]). Researchers also have documented the importance of providing young children with developmentally appropriate early writing instruction (Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref25">73</reflink>]), noting how a variety of teachers' modeling and scaffolding practices support handwriting (often measured by having children write their names) and estimated spelling skills (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref26">8</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref27">27</reflink>]). Intervention-based studies demonstrate that providing children with access to writing instruction supports a host of early writing and reading skills (Aram & Biron, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref28">2</reflink>] Zhang & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib104" id="ref29">104</reflink>]), suggesting the importance of these early writing experiences.</p> <p>Although early writing is a foundational literacy skill, our understanding of children's development of early writing skills and how to promote them outside of English orthography is limited. Conceptual models of children's early writing development in English suggests that writing skills can be organized into two broad domains: transcription and composing writing skills (Berninger & Swanson, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref30">3</reflink>] Juel et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref31">35</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref32">63</reflink>]). Importantly, early writing is conceptualized to involve not only the skills that reflect children's cognitive development (e.g., name writing, letter writing; Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref33">60</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib105" id="ref34">105</reflink>]) but also the skills that reflect children's sociocultural knowledge of writing as a means to communicate and express ideas (e.g., composing skills; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref35">65</reflink>] Rowe, [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref36">71</reflink>]; Rowe & Neitzel, [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref37">72</reflink>]). If we apply these models to the Chinese language system, the transcription domain of writing would involve the skills needed to write recognizable Chinese characters, while the composing domain would involve children's expression of ideas through creating a logically coherent message in verbal and/or written form (Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib100" id="ref38">100</reflink>]). Because sociocultural knowledge is developed within a specific environmental context, to best understand children's early writing development, researchers should examine the nature and quality of young children's writing experiences within specific social cultural environment, such as preschool classrooms (e.g., Gabas et al., [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref39">24</reflink>]) and home environment (e.g., Neumann & Neumann, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref40">57</reflink>]).</p> <p>One primary purpose of this study is to examine whether Chinese children's early writing development can be conceptualized as containing transcription and composing skills and to investigate the association between the classroom learning environment and children's transcription and composing skills. Although there is growing knowledge about the cognitive factors that contribute to early writing development in Chinese (Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref41">40</reflink>]; Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref42">106</reflink>]), only a few studies investigate how Chinese children develop early writing skills within specific social cultural contexts, and even fewer have focused on the quality of early writing experiences in early childhood settings. There is a clear need to investigate these associations, as over one billion people speak Chinese and 88.1% Chinese young children received center-based child care (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref43">53</reflink>]), and yet the majority of research on children's reading and writing development focuses on children learning English (Share, [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref44">75</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref45">76</reflink>]). Further, because Chinese is a morphosyllabic language, with no grapheme-phoneme correspondence between its oral and written form (Perfetti et al., [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref46">59</reflink>]), it is unclear whether existing models of early writing can adequately capture the nature of Chinese children's skills. Examining the nature of Chinese early writing skills and the factors that support their development is clearly warranted.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-3">Defining and Conceptualizing Chinese Early Writing Skills</hd> <p>Young children's early writing development is multifaceted and has been conceptualized as comprising multiple writing components (i.e., writing concept knowledge, handwriting, spelling, and composing). The Simple View of Writing (Berninger et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref47">4</reflink>]) organizes these four skills into two larger components, namely transcription (containing writing concept knowledge, handwriting, and spelling skills) and text generation (containing composing). Similarly, a widely regarded preschool writing model emphasizes that (a) transcription skills or procedural knowledge represents a child's ability to form letters and words and use estimated spelling to capture sounds in words while (b) composing or generative knowledge represents a child's ability compose phrases and sentences either orally or in writing to express ideas.</p> <p>Researchers examining preschoolers' early writing in an English language context have used various writing tasks to assess these two larger writing components (transcription/procedural knowledge & text generation/composing) as each includes distinct skills that are interrelated (i.e., writing concept knowledge, handwriting, spelling, and composing). For example, the English transcription component contains both handwriting and spelling skills, as children need knowledge of letters, and letter-sound correspondence, and the ability to form letters to translate their thoughts into print (Cabell et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref48">14</reflink>]). Transcription skills are typically assessed by name writing, letter writing, word dictation, or estimated spelling tasks (Diamond et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref49">21</reflink>]; Levin et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref50">38</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref51">62</reflink>]). Recently, researchers have developed developmentally and culturally appropriate composing assessments with visual prompts to capture preschool children's composing or generative knowledge of writing. In these studies, children's oral language about what they were writing was considered in coding children's writing samples (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref52">66</reflink>] Thomas et al., [<reflink idref="bib80" id="ref53">80</reflink>]). Studies examining children's oral language during the process of writing a narrative (see Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref54">66</reflink>]) or in talking and writing about what they were doing during play (see Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref55">74</reflink>]) are somewhat different than typical oral language interactions as they tend to focus on a specific topic or theme rather than focusing on exchanging information with another individual.</p> <p>Much less research exists about the development of Chinese early writing skills. Some researchers have conceptualized and measured Chinese children in elementary school within the Simple View of Writing framework (i.e., Yeung et al., [<reflink idref="bib102" id="ref56">102</reflink>]). Young preschoolers' writing, however, has been conceptualized in various ways. In some studies, early writing can be translated as 写字 ("writing Chinese characters") and conceptualized as a child's ability to write recognizable and correctly formed Chinese characters, using radicals and eight basic non-phonetic strokes (丶, 一, 丨, 丿, ㇏, ㇀,</p> <p>Graph</p> <p>, 亅). Researchers who approach writing in this manner often invite children to copy and write a set of printed Chinese characters as fast as they can without identifying the pronunciation or the definition of the characters and without a sociocultural context for the writing (e.g., Chinese writing fluency test; Tan et al., [<reflink idref="bib79" id="ref57">79</reflink>]). Although "hand-copying Chinese characters" (抄写) is a culturally relevant practice when learning to write Chinese characters (Packard et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref58">58</reflink>]), it is open to debate whether this should be conceptualized as a writing skill from a sociocultural perspective. Copying a set of characters does not involve a communicative purpose of writing, though copying Chinese characters may tap into children's cognitive skills, such as visual-motor or visual-spatial skills, that are important for reading Chinese characters (Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref59">94</reflink>]; Ye et al., [<reflink idref="bib101" id="ref60">101</reflink>]). In these studies, however, children's knowledge of the meaning and pronunciation of the characters was not assessed.</p> <p>Few studies of Chinese early literacy utilize writing assessments that align with a multicomponent view of early writing (Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref61">63</reflink>]), but researchers have assessed children's transcription skills in terms of generating recognizable written prints. Chinese writing approached in this manner may be translated as 书写 ("intentional writing with pen and paper") or 读写 ("reading to write"). Such a conceptualization recognizes the close connection between early reading skills and writing skills. For example, some researchers have examined young children's ability to write Chinese words through the use of dictation, without any visual or verbal prompts (Chinese word-dictation test; Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref62">42</reflink>]; Tong et al., [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref63">82</reflink>]). A challenge with such tasks is that they require children to have a certain level of early reading skills in order to understand the dictated words and then additional knowledge in order to reproduce the words in recognizable written forms by correctly positioning phonetic radicals and semantic radicals. For example, when writing a dictated character 唱 (/chang/sing), a child needs to first understand the meaning of the dictated character and then write the phonic radical of 昌 (/chang/) on the right side, and semantic radical 口 (mouth) on the left side. Chinese children also may write Pinyin letters, an alphabetic pronunciation annotation system, substituting the dictated characters they do not know how to write (e.g., McBride, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref64">49</reflink>]; Shen & Bear, [<reflink idref="bib77" id="ref65">77</reflink>]). The Chinese words in the dictation task evidence increasing orthographic complexity from one-character words to two- or three-characters words. This allows researchers to capture both conceptual print knowledge (e.g., linearity of writing from left to right) and procedural transcription skills (e.g., writing radicals and strokes to form characters).</p> <p>Although some researchers have used Chinese children's name writing as a proxy to understand early cognitive development in a unique linguistic and cultural context (Treiman & Yin, [<reflink idref="bib88" id="ref66">88</reflink>]), other researchers have utilized Chinese children's name-writing task to assess transcription skills. Tse et al. ([<reflink idref="bib89" id="ref67">89</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib90" id="ref68">90</reflink>]) validated a Chinese name-writing assessment, following a structure proposed by English early literacy researchers (Diamond et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref69">21</reflink>]) and suggested that the name-writing task can reflect Chinese children's procedural knowledge of writing recognizable Chinese characters. Zhang, Bingham, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref70">106</reflink>]) administered the name-writing task to Chinese preschoolers when investigating the cognitive factors in Chinese literacy skills. In their study, a reciprocal association between Chinese pre-reading (i.e., Pinyin knowledge) and name-writing skills, similar to young English-speaking children's development (Diamond et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref71">21</reflink>]), was found. Other cognitive factors, such as inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, were also associated with children's name writing.</p> <p>From a sociocultural perspective, Chinese word-dictation and name-writing assessments are also culturally appropriate. Although explicit large-group instruction of how to write Chinese characters, similar to elementary school teaching （小学化教学）, is prohibited in Chinese early childhood education, play-based exploration of writing skills is encouraged both in the classroom and at home. The Chinese National Learning and Development Guidelines of Early Childhood Education for Children Ages 3–6 (Ministry of Education of The People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref72">51</reflink>]) encourage the integration of writing opportunities, such as name writing, into art activities. With regard to parents, an examination of Chinese mothers interactions with their child suggests that they use different strategies to model the Chinese writing process and support children's efforts of writing Chinese characters (Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref73">41</reflink>]). One way that Chinese researchers have tried to attend to sociocultural factors in writing assessment is to employ commonly used Chinese words from daily life and/or children's story books in Chinese word dictation tasks (e.g., Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref74">42</reflink>]). Taken together, these findings suggest that name writing and word dictation tasks appear to be relevant assessments of young Chinese children's transcription skills as these types of writing experiences may be experienced in home or early school environments.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-4">Early Composing in Chinese Early Childhood Education Context</hd> <p>Young children's composing reflects the skills and knowledge needed to generate ideas that they want to write and knowledge of how to communicate these ideas to varied audiences (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref75">69</reflink>]; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref76">65</reflink>]). Although there is considerable variability in how composing skills are conceptualized and assessed in English language contexts (see Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref77">65</reflink>]), over the last decade, researchers have begun to employ tasks and coding rubrics that ask children to generate ideas and link these ideas to some form of written text (e.g., Bigozzi & Vettori, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref78">5</reflink>], Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref79">69</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref80">74</reflink>]). For example, Quinn and Bingham ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref81">66</reflink>]) used four composing related tasks (i.e., narrative, bubble picture writing, writing a list, creating a birthday invitation) and varied coding systems to illustrate how researchers can attend to features of both oral and written language in order to capture young children's composing development with a social-cultural perspective (e.g., Dyson, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref82">22</reflink>]; Vygotsky, [<reflink idref="bib91" id="ref83">91</reflink>]).</p> <p>While researchers examining children's composing within an English language context have emphasized sociocultural purposes for writing (Dyson, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref84">23</reflink>]; Rowe, [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref85">71</reflink>]), composing in Chinese is often positioned as a cognitive skill related to children's literacy development. For example, in typical Chinese elementary teaching curriculums, composing is described as 写作 ("writing narratives") or 作文 ("creating essays") suggesting a combination of children's skills of writing Chinese characters and creating narrative compositions (e.g., Yan et al., [<reflink idref="bib99" id="ref86">99</reflink>]). The assumption that composing products should include recognizable written Chinese characters has contributed to an understanding that asking preschool or kindergarten aged children to "write narratives" or "create an essay" is developmentally inappropriate given the challenge it poses to young children (e.g., Chan & Louie, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref87">17</reflink>] Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref88">106</reflink>]). As a result of this perspective, researchers and teachers have paid little attention to examining children's composing skills until the elementary or primary school grades when children have acquired sufficient cognitive and transcription abilities (Hu et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref89">33</reflink>]).</p> <p>Interestingly, Chinese national guidelines (Ministry of Education of The People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref90">51</reflink>]) suggest a conceptualization of composing that involves both verbal and written forms of expressing coherent ideas, which echoes current conceptualizations of early composing in US learning standards (Tortorelli et al., [<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref91">84</reflink>]) and research (Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref92">63</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref93">69</reflink>]). For example, Chinese children are expected to "express wishes and ideas through drawing and symbols by age five" and "describe an event and story through drawing and symbols by age six" (Ministry of Education of The People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref94">51</reflink>], p. 21). Because of the complexity of the Chinese orthography, these learning standards do not include the expectation that Chinese children should be able to generate writing products of recognizable Chinese characters, words, or sentences. In contrast, children are encouraged to verbally communicate their ideas of a specific event or an interesting topic along with the creation of symbols or drawings to represent their ideas. In other words, Chinese early learning standards do not require children to write recognizable Chinese characters but rather to link oral and written language. This perspective aligns to ideas that early composing may be assessed by attending to children's idea generation by eliciting their oral language about their writing and by examining the relation between oral language communication and written print (Dyson, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref95">23</reflink>]).</p> <p>A few previous studies have examined young Chinese children's composing skill with effective visual and/or verbal prompts similar to those used in the studies of early composing in English language context (e.g., Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref96">63</reflink>]; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref97">66</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref98">74</reflink>]). For example, in a naturalistic case study of a Chinese preschool child's writing development for a year, Chan et al. ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref99">18</reflink>]) found that the child progressed from writing her own name in Chinese at age four to composing a simple yet logically coherent narrative in her artwork by age five. Chen and Zhou ([<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref100">19</reflink>]) collected 105 writing samples from Chinese five-year-olds during routine drawing time after book-reading or community-building activities. Teachers prompted children to draw pictures with thematic questions of sociocultural experiences, such as "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "What will you look like?" and "Why do you want to be a firefighter?" and then encouraged children to write a sentence to answer the question. Although these studies are primarily descriptive in nature, data collection approaches in these studies allow children to, in addition to generating written Chinese characters and words, freely express their ideas related to sociocultural themes.</p> <p>Based upon theory and research, Chinese early writing in this study is conceptualized as containing two broad sets of skills (i.e., transcription and composition) and we employ a set of writing measures to assess each construct. We used three tasks to elicit children's transcription skills (i.e., the ability to write recognizable Chinese characters) that included: (a) a name-writing task, (b) Chinese word writing based on word dictation, and (c) character writing within a composing task. The composing task was also used to elicit children's early composing skills. This task, developed by Gerde and Bingham ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref101">26</reflink>]), was translated into Chinese and used to assess both transcription skills and composing skills through verbal expression. Early literacy researchers argue that the quality of children's verbal composing can be described in terms of the total number of ideas that children present and the relevance of their responses to the composing prompt (e.g., Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref102">61</reflink>]; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref103">66</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref104">68</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref105">74</reflink>]). In this study, Chinese children's verbal composing samples were coded to capture these various features. The total number of ideas and the number of Chinese characters in their description that children generate reflects their composing productivity (e.g., how many ideas children can generate; Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref106">61</reflink>]). The relevance of a child's response to the writing prompt demonstrates children's understanding of the "theme" and "purpose" of composing (i.e., task-message match; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref107">74</reflink>], and task adherence; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref108">66</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-5">Writing Environment in Chinese Early Childhood Classrooms</hd> <p>Understanding how children develop various early writing skills has implications for how they might be promoted in early childhood settings. Studies conducted by researchers in the United States suggest the importance of children's exposure to high-quality early writing environments in classroom. Early childhood classroom writing environments are conceptualized as consisting of structural features (i.e., the availability of various writing implements and materials) and process features (i.e., teachers' use of modeling and scaffolding strategies to support children's writing attempts; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib108" id="ref109">108</reflink>]). The presence of varied writing materials is important to children's writing development, as teachers are more likely to engage in writing-related practices if materials are plentiful and the presence of writing materials in multiple areas of an early childhood classroom allow children to engage in writing in their play in meaningful ways (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref110">8</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref111">69</reflink>]). Teachers enact many practices aimed at supporting children's writing development, including modeling and explaining the writing process, scaffolding children's writing attempts by breaking down a task into more manageable steps, and expanding children's involvement in writing by encouraging children to make learning connections (see Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref112">7</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref113">68</reflink>]).</p> <p>Limited research to date has examined how Chinese children's learning experiences in early childhood classroom support their early writing development, despite the recent report that the majority of young children in China enrolled into center-based child care programs (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref114">54</reflink>]). Rao et al. ([<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref115">70</reflink>]) found that children from a quality preschool program show significantly better math and literacy skills in first grade than do their peers who did not participate in preschool. Nevertheless, Rao et al. did not examine how the preschool classroom environment related to children's early literacy outcomes directly; observational ratings of preschool classroom environment were linked to children's academic attainment test scores in the first grade. In China, preschool classrooms are evaluated annually based on the standards listed in the national Preschool Care and Education Quality Evaluation Guidelines (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref116">53</reflink>]). There are standards in the domain of "environment development and arrangement" that require each classroom to have abundant educational materials and children's books and in the domain of "teaching process" that require integrative teaching of health, language, society, science, and art. The evaluation guidelines, however, focus mainly on reading materials (i.e., each classroom must have at least 10 children's books per child) and general teaching practices (i.e., small-group discussion for promoting children's communication of opinions and ideas). The expectations for teachers' implementation of early literacy instruction of specific literacy skills are not explicitly included. The lack of attention to early writing skills appears to be reflected in observational studies of Chinese preschool classrooms, as research documents more language learning materials (e.g., books) than writing materials (e.g., pens, paper) and far more frequent teacher-child conversations aimed at supporting children's vocabulary or reading skills than writing skills (Li & Rao, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref117">44</reflink>] Li et al., [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref118">45</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref119">46</reflink>]).</p> <p>Although teachers' explicit writing instruction is expected and has been observed in Chinese elementary classrooms (e.g., Wu et al., [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref120">97</reflink>]), only a few observational studies document that preschool teachers utilize play-based activities to support children's exploration of early writing skills or the connection between reading and writing. For example, some Chinese teachers have been observed helping children to write words from story books during play time (Li et al., [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref121">46</reflink>]). Chinese preschoolers have also been observed experimenting with writing characters as part of art or drawing activities (Chen & Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref122">19</reflink>] Li & Rao, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref123">44</reflink>]). Given the limited research that examines children's writing experiences within a Chinese language context, we utilized a classroom observational tool (i.e., Writing Resources and Interactions in Teaching Environments [WRITE]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref124">27</reflink>]) that allows for naturalistic observations of early childhood writing environments and instructional opportunities. Although the WRITE has only been used in English speaking contexts, its open-ended response format allows for researchers to capture a wide range of practices theorized to support young children's writing development (see Measures). Using a tool that has been used in previous research also allowed us to establish a baseline for understanding Chinese children's early writing experiences and their relations to Chinese children's early writing skills.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-6">Research Questions</hd> <p>To explore the association between early childhood writing environments and children's early writing skills, this study addresses three research questions: 1. To what extent do Chinese name-writing, word-writing, and composing tasks reflect Chinese children's early writing skills? Because some Chinese writing tasks require the coordination of phonological, morphological, and orthographical knowledge, we utilize varied tasks to assess children's transcription skills (e.g., name writing, word dictation, composing with recognizable characters) and composing skills (e.g., describing and expressing coherent ideas). We hypothesize that Chinese children are capable of generating writing samples independently and their writing skills can be reflected by these two broad domains of transcription and composing.</p> <p>Research Questions 2 and 3 concern early writing environments and their association with early writing skills. 2. What types of writing environments and practices are evident in Chinese early childhood programs? 3. How are Chinese writing environments and classroom practices related to Chinese early writing skills? Based on existing observational studies and the current Chinese early childhood teaching standards, we hypothesize that Chinese preschool classrooms are limited in the amount of writing materials available to children and that children will be exposed to infrequent teacher-child writing interactions. Given the consistent association between teachers' instruction and children's early writing skills (e.g., Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref125">8</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib108" id="ref126">108</reflink>]), however, we also hypothesize that the classroom writing environment is associated with both the transcription and composing domains of Chinese early writing.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-7">Method</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0181909711-8">Participants</hd> <p>A total of 155 Chinese preschool children (73 girls, <emph>M =</emph> 66.59 months, <emph>SD</emph> = 7.35 months) and their teachers were recruited from eight early childhood centers in Baoding City, Heibei Province, China. Baoding is a mid-size regional urban area. While the city is less developed than major Chinese metro areas such as Beijing and Shanghai, the urban communities where children were recruited are considered middle-income communities based on the local government annual income report (i.e., about $5,500 US per person per year). All participating early childhood centers follow Chinese national guidelines and teaching standards of early childhood education.</p> <p>After receiving permission from early childhood center directors, letters were sent home to families who gave permission for their children to participate in the study. A total of 16 lead teachers from 16 preschool classrooms were also recruited for observations, with an average of 9 children per classroom participating (range of 8–10 children recruited per classroom). Each participating early childhood classroom served approximately 40 children. All participating children and teachers spoke Mandarin Chinese and reported writing simplified Chinese characters in their daily communications. According to the teachers, all children who were participating in the study were considered to be typically developing. Observations of teachers' instructional practice and assessments of children's early writing skills were conducted in the Spring semester of the academic year.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-9">Measures</hd> <p>This study utilized direct measures of children's early writing skills and direct observations of classroom environments.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-10">Early Writing Skills</hd> <p>A series of culturally appropriate tasks that have been demonstrated to adequately capture the early writing skills of young Chinese children were utilized. We chose tasks focused on both transcription and composing writing skills.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-11">Name Writing</hd> <p>Name-writing assessments are frequently used in the studies of early writing skills in the English language context (Bloodgood, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref127">10</reflink>]; Diamond et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref128">21</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref129">28</reflink>]) and have been validated in the Chinese language context by Tse et al. ([<reflink idref="bib89" id="ref130">89</reflink>]). During the assessment, children were given a blank sheet of 8.5" × 11" paper and a marker. Children were asked to write their names "as much as you can," so their writing samples would reflect the stage of their writing development (i.e., scribbling, strokes, radicals, or characters). To encourage children to generate any type of writing sample, children were prompted to write in Pinyin letters if they could not write Chinese characters. None of the children, however, generated Pinyin name writing. Children's writing was coded based on a 4-point continuum similar to that used by Bloodgood ([<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref131">10</reflink>]) and Sulzby et al. ([<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref132">78</reflink>]). Because Chinese children write characters comprised of strokes and radicals, we modified the rating scheme based on earlier work (Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref133">106</reflink>]) to account for the completeness of characters: refusal to write = 0, scribbling = 1, writing with strokes or radicals = 2, writing at least one recognizable character from their name with a mixture of radicals = 3, and writing recognizable characters from names = 4. This coding scheme aligns with Yin and Treiman's ([<reflink idref="bib103" id="ref134">103</reflink>]) observation of young Chinese children's name-writing performance. Children's writing samples were coded by two research assistants. The research assistants established coding reliability with the authors before coding. Inter-rater reliability was checked when coding every 10 children's writing samples to maintain high reliability. This process yielded an average reliability of <emph>k</emph> >.90.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-12">Word-Dictation Task</hd> <p>Children's Chinese word-writing skills were assessed by a Chinese writing assessment developed by Lin et al. ([<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref135">42</reflink>]). This measure, which evidences adequate internal consistency (<emph>α</emph> =.70), has been used in previous studies of Chinese children's early writing (see Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref136">94</reflink>]). Research assistants dictated 14 Chinese words to children in sequential order from simple one-character words to more advanced two-word characters, with the complexity of characters increasing as the number of strokes in a Chinese character increased. Children were asked to write down the words that they heard on a blank piece of paper. The 14 words included four single-character words and 10 two-character words. These words represent common daily words selected from standard kindergarten textbooks. Children's writing was scored based on the number of characters that children wrote correctly (24 characters total in the assessment). The maximum score is 24 points.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-13">Chinese Composing</hd> <p>This study utilized a composing task with picture prompts (Gerde & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref137">25</reflink>]). In the task, children were presented with a series of four pictures of a mother and baby penguin who become separated on an iceberg and then reunited. Each picture had a speech bubble on it for capturing the child's writing. The research assistant showed the children the four pictures, and generally explained each picture, "Look at these pictures, each picture has a penguin mom and a baby penguin." The assessor then prompted the child to look at each picture and stated, "Look at these pictures. Can you tell me what the penguin mom is saying to baby penguin?" This process was repeated for each picture. The research assistants wrote down the children's verbal description of the pictures and then prompted with them further with, "In books, speech bubbles are used to capture what characters are thinking or saying. Write what you think mommy penguin is saying to baby penguin." The research assistants encouraged children to "write as much as you can" or "do the best you can," but no further prompts about where to write and how to write were given. This composing task captures both verbal and written input from children, which can be examined for logically related ideas and reflects the sociocultural values of writing (Dyson, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref138">23</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref139">74</reflink>]). Children's verbal and written responses were captured and coded to generate a set of variables that included transcription and composing skills for analyses (see Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref140">69</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-14">Transcription-Related Skills</hd> <p>To capture transcription skills, two research assistants counted the number of recognizable Chinese characters in the children's writing samples. Children's scribblings that were not recognizable as radicals or Chinese characters were not included in the counting. To maintain high reliability, inter-rater reliability was checked after coding every 10 children's writing samples. This process yielded an average reliability of <emph>k</emph> >.90.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-15">Composing-Related Skills</hd> <p>Children's generative skills or composing skills are understood as their capacity to create and structure ideas. Recent studies (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref141">66</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref142">69</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref143">74</reflink>]) indicate that early composing extends beyond what children physically write or draw. It encompasses their intentional effort to bridge their spoken words with various forms of written expressions, including drawing, scribbling, or using invented spelling (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref144">65</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref145">66</reflink>]). As children's early composing skills are constrained by their limited early transcription skills, early writing researchers started to capture both children's oral response and written composition to represent their emergent early writing skills. Children's oral descriptions of the pictures' character conversations were transcribed by research assistants and coded for the number of ideas in their description, number of Chinese characters in their description, and level of relevancy between their ideas and the pictures. The total number of ideas was calculated by counting the different number of ideas children orally expressed. For example, if a child said "there is a penguin mom and a penguin baby walking on snow. I also walk with my mom like this. They look happy. This paper is too thin." The child expressed total four ideas: three different ideas related to the picture, and the last idea about the paper was not related to the picture. The number of characters is the representation of composing productivity (e.g., based on the writing prompt, how many different ideas were generated; Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref146">61</reflink>]). Relevance to the prompt (i.e., task-message match; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref147">74</reflink>], and task adherence; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref148">66</reflink>]) is conceptualized as children's capacity to produce oral and/or written outputs that are related to the task requirement and coded dichotomously (0 for not relevant; 1 for relevant).</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-16">Classroom Writing Environment</hd> <p>The WRITE (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref149">27</reflink>]), a 41-item observational measure, was used to understand the nature of the writing environment and frequency of writing experiences in Chinese preschool classrooms. This measure has been used in observational (e.g., Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref150">8</reflink>]) and intervention studies (e.g., Zhang & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib104" id="ref151">104</reflink>]) of teachers' writing instruction in an English language context and is related to children's early writing skills. To ensure consistency and accuracy of translation, one of the authors translated the measure to Chinese, and a native Chinese-speaking research assistant back-translated it from Chinese to English. During a two-hour observation, a trained observer evaluated the presence of writing-related learning materials in the classroom and a variety of instructional experiences that might support children's early writing development. Structural features of the writing environment are evaluated on 21 items designed to assess the variety of environmental print displayed in the classroom (e.g., posters with prints, labels on furniture), variety of writing instruments (e.g., pens, pencils, markers, crayons), variety of writing materials (e.g., paper, whiteboards, stencils), and how materials are available for children throughout the day (i.e., length of time and where in the classroom materials are located).</p> <p>Teacher-child writing-related interactions are evaluated with 15 items that include teachers' enactment of modeling and scaffolding strategies designed to support young children's writing attempts. Finally, three items assess the degree to which children are observed to write independently. Trained research assistants derive rating scores based on the number of checked items in the writing environment domain. For example, an observer would first check all available tools in the writing center that are available for young children and then give each a rating (0, if no tools are available; 1, if one to two types of tools are available; and 2, if more than two types of tools are available). In order to ensure that the tool was culturally responsive to the Chinese context, observers can take notes about writing tools that might be used for writing in China but are not listed in the observation check-list. The observer would take a picture of the tool and write down a descriptive note about to the tool to share with the research team who would then discuss each of these additions with local teachers and educational specialists to decide whether the tool may be considered as a writing material. For example, several classrooms provided Chinese calligraphy brushes (毛笔) for children to freely explore during free choice time or art activities. Such unique Chinese writing tools are used in the creation of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, but were not included in the list of writing materials in the original WRITE measure.</p> <p>For the domain of teachers' writing interactions, an observer would rate interactions based on the frequency of specific teaching practices. For example, on the item, "Teacher asks child to talk about their writing," a rater would assign the score of 0 if the indicator was not observed; 1, if the practice occurred briefly or incidentally; or 2, if the practice was observed occurring multiple times or if a single incident happened for an extended period of time. Observers would also write a justification for their score. The potential total score range for the writing material and environmental print domain is 0–42, while the range for the domain of teacher-child writing interaction is 0–36.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-17">Data Collection Procedure</hd> <p>Direct assessments of children's writing skills and classroom observations were conducted by trained research staff who were native Chinese speakers and familiar with early childhood classroom instruction and environments. The research staff completed data collection training, which included the protocol for assessing children's early writing skills and how to conduct classroom observations using the WRITE. Before engaging in data collection, the staff reached strong inter-rater reliability (i.e., higher than Cohen's kappa >.90). Direct assessments of children's writing skills were conducted in a quiet space next to their classrooms, such as a hallway, activity room, or teacher's office. Each child assessment lasted approximately 20–30 minutes, and writing samples were collected during the assessment for later coding. Each classroom observation started from the indoor early morning routine (晨间活动) and lasted for two hours, with the observation focusing only on indoor classroom learning materials and teacher-child interactions.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-18">Analytic Procedure</hd> <p>To address Research Question 1 and examine the dimensionality of Chinese children's writing, we generated two confirmatory factor analysis models. The first factor analysis model is a one-factor model as a baseline model, in which all of the coded writing skills from the measures were loaded to a single latent factor of children's writing skill. This model represented the overall quality of children's writing (Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref152">61</reflink>]). As children's writings may be conceptualized to contain multiple writing components, the second factor analysis model is a two-factor model including a latent factor of transcription skill and another latent factor of composing skill. Children's scores from the writing assessments loaded to the two-factor model in order to reveal a potential multi-dimensional structure of early Chinese writing. Descriptive analysis of Chinese classroom writing environments and practices were conducted to address Research Question 2. The analyses were conducted using the statistical software package Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref153">55</reflink>]).</p> <p>To address Research Question 3 – the relation between the early writing environment and children's writing skill – we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) for analyzing multi-level data structure, because children's data was nested in classrooms. The unconditional model fit to the sample at level-1 was as follows:</p> <p>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref154">1</reflink>)</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>Y</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>=</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>r</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> </p> <p>where</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>Y</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents a child's transcription or composing score in classroom j,</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents the predicted transcription or composing score for class j, and</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>r</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mtext mathcolor="red">\~</mtext><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">N</mi><mfenced open="(" close=")"><mrow><mn>0</mn><mo>,</mo><mrow><msup><mi>σ</mi><mn>2</mn></msup></mrow></mrow></mfenced></math> </ephtml> represents the difference between observed children's writing scores and their classroom's predicted scores. The outcome variables (transcription and composing factor scores) are treated as continuous and normally distributed variables. The level-2 unconditional model fit for the sample was as follows:</p> <p>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref155">2</reflink>)</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>=</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>+</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msub><mi>u</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi><mo>,</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> </p> <p>where</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents the overall expected transcription or composing scores across classrooms and</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>u</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mtext mathcolor="red">\~</mtext><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">N</mi><mfenced open="(" close=")"><mrow><mn>0</mn><mo>,</mo><mrow><msub><mi>τ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></mrow></mfenced></math> </ephtml> represents the change between the grand mean and the mean outcome score for classroom j.</p> <p>The conditional model includes child age as an individual level predictor which is centered based on the grand mean score. The level-1 equation for the conditional model is as follows:</p> <p>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref156">3</reflink>)</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>Y</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>=</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>1</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mfenced open="(" close=")"><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ChildAg</mi><mrow><msub><mi>e</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>−</mo><mover><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ChildAge</mi></mrow><mo accent="false">‾</mo></mover><mo>.</mo><mo>.</mo></mrow></mfenced><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>r</mi><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">ij</mi></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> </p> <p>There were two predictors at the classroom level. The level-2 equation for the conditional</p> <p>model is as follows:</p> <p>(<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref157">4</reflink>)</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mfenced open="{" close=""><mrow><mtable rowspacing="4pt" columnspacing="1em"><mtr><mtd><mrow><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>=</mo><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>01</mn></mrow></msub></mrow><mfenced open="(" close=")"><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">WMateria</mi><mrow><msub><mi>l</mi><mi>j</mi></msub></mrow><mo>−</mo><mover><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">WMaterial</mi></mrow><mo accent="false">‾</mo></mover><mo>.</mo><mo>.</mo></mrow></mfenced><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>02</mn></mrow></msub></mrow><mfenced open="(" close=")"><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">TInstructio</mi><mrow><msub><mi>n</mi><mi>j</mi></msub></mrow><mo>−</mo><mover><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic">TInstruction</mi></mrow><mo accent="false">‾</mo></mover><mo>.</mo><mo>.</mo></mrow></mfenced><mo>+</mo><mrow><msub><mi>u</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow></mrow></mtd></mtr><mtr><mtd><mrow><mrow><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mn>1</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo>=</mo><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></mrow></mtd></mtr></mtable></mrow></mfenced></math> </ephtml> </p> <p>where</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents the average expected transcription or composing scores across classrooms,</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents the expected impact of child age on children's writing skills,</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>01</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents the writing materials' expected impact on children's writing skills (transcription or composing skills), and</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>02</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> </ephtml> represents teacher-child writing interactions' expected impact on children's writing skills. The same assumptions are made for the level-2 residuals</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mrow><msub><mi>u</mi><mrow><mn>0</mn><mi mathvariant="italic">j</mi></mrow></msub></mrow><mo stretchy="false">)</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow></math> </ephtml> as were made in the unconditional model. For research question 3, the analysis was conducted in R using the lme4 package.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-19">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0181909711-20">Chinese Children's Writing Skills and Classroom Environment</hd> <p>The descriptive statistics and correlational matrix of children's performance in writing tasks and the classroom writing environment are presented in Table 1. Children's age correlated significantly with their performance in generating written Chinese characters during writing tasks. Approximately 90% of the children generated writing samples for the name-writing task, with the majority of children (80%) accurately writing at least one recognizable Chinese character. Half of the participating children accurately wrote their names with recognizable Chinese characters. Most children (80%) also wrote at least one correct and recognizable character in their response to the Chinese word-dictation writing task. In contrast, approximately 69% of children wrote at least one recognizable Chinese character in the composing task. Although writing is a complex task for Chinese preschool children, results indicate that many are developmentally capable of writing recognizable Chinese characters.</p> <p>Table 1. Descriptive statistics of children's early writing skills (<emph>N</emph> = 155).</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><td /><td>Variables</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>7</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>Child age</td><td>1</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Name writing</td><td>.57**</td><td>1</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Word writing</td><td>.65**</td><td>.47**</td><td>1</td><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>4</td><td># of written characters in composing</td><td>.32**</td><td>.17<sup>†</sup></td><td>.22*</td><td>1</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>5</td><td># of oral composing ideas</td><td>.05</td><td>−.05</td><td>.04</td><td>.16</td><td>1</td><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Oral composing relevancy</td><td>.18</td><td>.31**</td><td>.19<sup>†</sup></td><td>.29**</td><td>.04</td><td>1</td><td /></tr><tr><td>7</td><td># of characters in oral composing</td><td>.05</td><td>−.02</td><td>.07</td><td>.20*</td><td>.86**</td><td>.08</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td /><td>Potential maximum score</td><td>n.a.</td><td>4</td><td>24</td><td>n.a.</td><td>n.a.</td><td>8</td><td>n.a.</td></tr><tr><td /><td>Range</td><td>50–79</td><td>0–4</td><td>0–11</td><td>0–17</td><td>1–30</td><td>0–8</td><td>2–194</td></tr><tr><td /><td>Mean</td><td>66.68</td><td>3.06</td><td>3.40</td><td>1.92</td><td>8.08</td><td>4.20</td><td>47.60</td></tr><tr><td /><td>SD</td><td>7.34</td><td>1.28</td><td>2.80</td><td>2.96</td><td>4.88</td><td>2.37</td><td>35.10</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>1 <sups>†</sups>p <.10, *<emph>p</emph> <.05, **<emph>p</emph> <.001.</p> <p>All children generated an oral output during the composing task. We did not, however, find a significant correlation between children's age and the characteristics of oral output (i.e., number of ideas, the level of relevance, and the number of characters in oral output). As this task asks children to verbally compose first and then write their ideas down in the speech bubble, a sizable percentage of children (approximately 33%) either refused the writing task or indicated that they were unable to write. When the research assistant prompted children to write what they verbally composed, typical statements from children about them being unable to write included, "I don't know how to write;" "I cannot write;" or "I'm too young to write." In contrast, children who generated written Chinese characters during the composing task (67% of the sample) wrote two to three recognizable characters.</p> <p>The significant correlation between the number of characters and the number of ideas in oral output suggested that the children who generated longer oral output tended to express more ideas. The length of children's oral output (i.e., number of characters in oral output) and the number of ideas in oral output, however, were not necessarily relevant to the given pictures. Some children may express a few ideas related to a given picture, but then started talking about writing materials (e.g., paper and marker) or other personal experience that was not relevant to the picture (e.g., "I watched a cartoon about penguins at home"). There was a significant correlation between the number of characters in oral output and the number of characters written during the composing task. This may indicate that children who gave a longer oral output also tended to write more recognizable characters. The significant correlation between the number of characters children wrote during the composing task and the level of relevance of verbal output indicated that the content of children's written texts during the composing task was likely to be relevant to the pictures.</p> <p>Descriptive analyses undertaken to address Research Question 2 reveal that the quality of the writing environment of classrooms was generally low. The mean scores of writing materials and teachers' instruction were at the lower quartile of the potential total scores. Although all participating preschool classrooms had similar learning center arrangements to preschool classrooms in the United States (i.e., classrooms had distinct interest areas that children could choose from), they did not have a designated writing center. Certain materials for writing (e.g., markers, paper) were noted by observers to be present mainly in the art or reading/library areas of the room. Teacher-generated and child-generated environmental print were observed in classrooms, but environmental print did not explicitly model writing conventions (see Picture 1). Teachers' writing instruction also was observed to occur rarely and incidentally. Approximately 25% of teachers did not engage in any explicit writing focused instructional interactions (e.g., talking about the process of writing Chinese characters, modeling writing Chinese characters with markers or pens) or prompt and scaffold children's writing attempts (e.g., explaining to children the procedure or steps of writing a Chinese character). Typical writing practices (over 50% teachers implemented the practice) that teachers engaged in included "writing Chinese characters as children dictate," "reminding children to write their names on art or other generated products," "talking about the usage of writing instruments," "creating characters to trace or dot-letter to prompt children's writing," and "providing word cards for children to copy." Although writing environments were generally limited, correlational analyses indicated a potential association between teachers' writing instruction and children's ability to write recognizable Chinese characters in name-writing, word-writing, and composing tasks (Table 1).</p> <p>Graph: Picture 1. The example of teacher and child-generated environmental print in Chinese classrooms.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-21">Conceptual Structure of Chinese Early Writing</hd> <p>To address Research Question 1, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses to examine whether the structure of Chinese early writing consisted of one or more factors. The one-factor model assumes that all writing tasks collectively reflect Chinese children's writing skills (see Figure 1), but the model fit was poor, <emph>X</emph><sups>2</sups> (<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref158">9</reflink>) = 216.58, <emph>p</emph> <.001, CFI = 0.16, RMSEA = 0.39. The variables that reflect children's verbal composing (i.e., number of ideas, number of Chinese characters in verbal composing, and the level of relevance between the generated ideas and the story pictures) had low factor loadings. These results suggest that the Chinese early writing construct may involve multiple factors.</p> <p>Graph: Figure 1. Standardized factor loadings of the one factor CFA model.</p> <p>Therefore, and consistent with existing research and theory, we tested a two-factor model in which the first factor consisted of "transcription skills" and contained children's ability to write recognizable Chinese characters, as measured across the three tasks (i.e., name writing, word dictation, and composing with recognizable characters), and the second factor represented children's "composing skills," as measured by children's ability to create logically related ideas verbally. The two-factor model evidenced a good fit (see Figure 2), <emph>X</emph><sups>2</sups> (<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref159">8</reflink>) = 8.2, <emph>p</emph> =.41, CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.01. The variables of children's written and verbal writing skills had statistically significant factor loadings to respective factors, although the factor loadings of the number of Chinese characters and the level of verbal writing relevancy had lower loadings. The correlation between the two factors was statistically significant only at a marginal level, suggesting relative independence of transcription and composing skills. This result supports the hypothesis that Chinese early writing can be conceptualized as a construct that consists of multiple domains. Transcription and composing domains reflect distinct early writing skills and collectively describe the status of children's early writing development.</p> <p>Graph: Figure 2. Standardized factor loadings of the two-factor CFA model.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-22">Relations Between Writing Environment and Early Writing</hd> <p>To address Research Question 3, we employed several hierarchical linear models to investigate the associations among the classroom writing environment and children's writing development (i.e., transcription and composing). Descriptive statistics are displayed in Table 2. Because transcription and composing scores represent factor scores, their means are all zero. The average writing materials rating was 12.26 with a minimum rating of 3 and a maximum rating of 24. The average teacher instruction rating was 10.46 with a minimum rating of 0 and a maximum rating of 25.</p> <p>Table 2. Descriptive statistics of children's early writing skills factor scores (<emph>N</emph> = 155) and classroom writing environment (<emph>N</emph> = 16).</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><td /><td>Variables</td><td>Mean</td><td><italic>SD</italic></td><td>Min</td><td>Max</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>Child age</td><td>66.6</td><td>7.34</td><td>50</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Transcription factor score</td><td>0</td><td>0.81</td><td>−1.44</td><td>2.07</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Composing factor score</td><td>0</td><td>4.27</td><td>−7.13</td><td>17.46</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Writing materials</td><td>12.26</td><td>6.20</td><td>3</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Teacher instructions</td><td>10.46</td><td>7.76</td><td>0</td><td>25</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>The intra-class correlation coefficient was calculated using the unconditional model to determine if there was enough variance at level-2 to justify using classroom predictors (</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi mathvariant="italic">ICC</mi><mo>=</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><mfrac><mrow><mrow><msub><mi mathvariant="italic">τ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></mrow><mrow><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msup><mi>σ</mi><mn>2</mn></msup></mrow><mo>+</mo><mrow><mrow><mi mathvariant="italic" /></mrow></mrow><mrow><msub><mi>τ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></mrow></mfrac></mrow><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math> </ephtml> in the model. Results suggest that 68% of the variance in transcription scores can be attributed to between level-2 units. While only 1% of the variance in composing scores lays in class level.</p> <p>In the conditional model of children's transcription skills (Table 3), the intercept (</p> <p>Graph</p> <p> <ephtml> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math> </ephtml> represents the average student's transcription scores. Child age was statistically significantly related to children's transcription scores. Regarding the influence of the writing materials when accounting for child age and teacher instruction, there was not a statistically significant relationship between a classroom's writing materials and a child's transcription score. The average transcription score increased by an estimated 0.01 points for every unit increase in the classroom's writing materials rating. Regarding the influence of teacher instruction when accounting for the writing materials rating and child age, for every unit increase in teachers' instruction rating, the average transcription score increased by an estimated 0.03 points. The relationship was statistically significant (<emph>p</emph> =.04).</p> <p>Table 3. Multilevel results for transcription skill outcomes.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><td /><td /><td><italic>Unconditional</italic></td><td><italic>Conditional</italic></td></tr><tr><td>Parameter</td><td>Coefficient</td><td>Est.</td><td><italic>SE</italic></td><td><italic>p</italic></td><td>Est.</td><td><italic>SE</italic></td><td><italic>p</italic></td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Fixed effects</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td> Model for Intercept</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td> Grand mean</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0013.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>−0.00</td><td>0.18</td><td>.995</td><td>−0.00</td><td>.11</td><td>.991</td></tr><tr><td> Child Age</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0014.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>0.04</td><td>0.01</td><td><bold><.001</bold></td></tr><tr><td> Writing Materials</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0015.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>01</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>0.01</td><td>0.02</td><td>.670</td></tr><tr><td> Teacher Instruction</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0016.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>02</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>0.03</td><td>0.01</td><td>.<bold>039</bold></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>2 The bolded values are <emph>p</emph> value of significance.</p> <p>In the conditional model of children's composing skills (Table 4), none of the predictors were statistically significantly related to children's composing scores.</p> <p>Table 4. Multilevel results for composing skill outcomes.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><td /><td /><td><italic>Unconditional</italic></td><td><italic>Conditional</italic></td></tr><tr><td>Parameter</td><td>Coefficient</td><td>Est.</td><td><italic>SE</italic></td><td><italic>p</italic></td><td>Est.</td><td><italic>SE</italic></td><td><italic>p</italic></td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Fixed effects</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td> Model for Intercept</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td> Grand mean</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0017.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>00</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>−0.00</td><td>0.36</td><td>.999</td><td>−0.00</td><td>0.39</td><td>1.000</td></tr><tr><td> Child Age</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0018.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>0.03</td><td>0.05</td><td>.581</td></tr><tr><td> Writing Materials</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0019.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>01</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>−0.01</td><td>0.06</td><td>.825</td></tr><tr><td> Teacher Instruction</td><td><p><graphic href="heed_a_2360876_ilm0020.gif" content-type="Graph" /><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow xmlns=""><msub><mi>γ</mi><mrow><mn>02</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></p></td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>0.01</td><td>0.05</td><td>.809</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0181909711-23">Discussion</hd> <p>This study was designed to examine the structure of Chinese early writing and to understand environmental factors in early childhood settings that may support these skills. Despite the majority of Chinese preschool children participating in preschool education, our understanding of young Chinese children's writing development and experiences in early childhood settings is extremely limited. Further, because Chinese is the second-most spoken language in the world and works differently from alphabetic languages in how oral and written languages are related, there is a need to investigate young Chinese children's early writing development.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-24">Chinese Preschoolers' Early Writing Skills</hd> <p>Our limited knowledge about Chinese children's early writing development stands in contrast to the growing literature on the mechanisms by which children learn to read Chinese characters (McBride & Wang, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref160">50</reflink>]). Although current Chinese early childhood teaching standards do not contain the expectation that Chinese preschool children will write recognizable Chinese characters, our findings suggest that the majority of preschool children can independently generate writing samples that evidence some conventionality across a variety of early writing tasks. Most children in this study were capable of writing their own names with correct and recognizable Chinese characters. This suggests that, despite the absence of clear early childhood writing standards, children were having experiences at home and/or school that supported their early writing development. Although Chinese orthography is more visually complex than alphabetic languages, such as English (Treiman & Kessler, [<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref161">86</reflink>]), it may be universal for young children to develop both reading (Both de Vries and Bus, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref162">13</reflink>]; Treiman & Broderick, [<reflink idref="bib85" id="ref163">85</reflink>]) and writing skills (Cabell et al., [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref164">15</reflink>]) from their own names.</p> <p>The significant correlation between Chinese children's performance in name-writing and word-dictation tasks is similar to what is found among young children in alphabetic language contexts, such as Dutch and English (e.g., Levin et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref165">38</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref166">62</reflink>] Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref167">106</reflink>]). Researchers tend to consider name writing as a beginning step of phonetic writing because children who wrote their own name also spelled unpracticed words in a word-dictation task that included the letters from their names (Both-de Vries Anna & Bus, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref168">12</reflink>] Zhang, Diamond, et al., [<reflink idref="bib107" id="ref169">107</reflink>]). In this study, however, it may not be appropriate to view Chinese name writing as a form of phonetic writing. This is because the basic strokes that form Chinese radicals are not phonetic or semantic. What might look like small changes in strokes can have large implications toward word meaning. For example, 犬 (dog), 大 (big), and太 (great) have similar semantic radicals but different pronunciations and different word meanings. In the Chinese word-dictation task, the first four one-character words (i.e., 口 (mouth), 八 (<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref170">8</reflink>), 马 (horse), and 云 (cloud) are logographic characters without phonetic radicals. Only approximately 20% of children in our sample correctly wrote the first two-character Chinese word 王子 (prince), which also does not have semantic radicals. Further, only four children wrote the two-character words that included a phonetic radical 指（semantic radical扌hand, and phonic radical 旨/zhi/).</p> <p>It is important to acknowledge that none of the children in our study wrote their names or dictated Chinese characters using Pinyin. This may because Chinese children do not necessarily rely on phonological knowledge to write the Chinese characters that are familiar to them, such as their names and simple logographic common characters. Wang et al.'s ([<reflink idref="bib95" id="ref171">95</reflink>]) one-year longitudinal study found that children's skill in reading Chinese words orally and writing dictated words were not significantly correlated until the end of their preschool year. Children's knowledge of radicals in the beginning of their preschool year, however, was a significant predictor of children's Chinese word-dictation writing skills at the end of their preschool year. Li and Yin ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref172">48</reflink>]) found that Chinese preschool children could effectively differentiate Chinese characters from Tibetan alphabets, which share similar shapes and visual complexity, based on the formation and positions of strokes and radicals. Children's orthographic knowledge of strokes and radicals, in turn, may support their writing of other Chinese characters (Tong et al., [<reflink idref="bib83" id="ref173">83</reflink>]). In our study, we also observed teachers' calling children's attention to the forms of Chinese characters. For example, when children wrote their own names, teachers often reminded them to write strokes or radicals in the correct sequence (e.g., from the left side, or upper radicals, to the right side, or lower radicals). Although this practice was not widely enacted across classrooms, it may suggest Chinese children develop visual knowledge of Chinese orthographic features, such as the formation of strokes and radicals, through opportunities to practice writing their names.</p> <p>Children's performance on the composing task illustrates some of the complexities in trying to assess young Chinese children's composing knowledge. Although children in this sample were able to generate both verbal output and written prints during the composing task, similar to children from an English-speaking context (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref174">69</reflink>]), there was large variation in children's composing performance. Many children in this sample seemed to view verbal composing as different from writing. After verbally composing, a sizable percentage of children declined the invitation to write down their oral output because they did not appear to think that writing down oral output was developmentally appropriate for their age (i.e., "I'm too young to write") or because they lacked sufficient writing skills (i.e., "I do not know how to write"). In contrast, despite the fact that writing Chinese characters is cognitively demanding, none of the children rejected the invitation to write during the name-writing or word-dictation tasks. The finding that all Chinese children generated oral output, but many struggled to connect these responses to meaningful marks on the page, echoes the findings of Coates's observation study ([<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref175">20</reflink>]), that young children may compose partially or wholly orally. Children who provided a longer oral output may not necessarily produce a more relevant oral response to the given pictures, but they were more likely to write down more Chinese characters and words. Further, when they created any written texts, the texts were more likely to be relevant to the given pictures. This finding supports Bodrova and Leong's ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref176">11</reflink>]) belief that private speech may help children to plan and compose. The process of oral composing may allow children to refine their ideas and create written text that is relevant to a given theme or topic. Children's ability to link oral and written language is featured in English early writing coding systems (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref177">67</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref178">74</reflink>]) and presents an important area for future studies focused on Chinese children's early writing development.</p> <p>In the process of data collection and writing sample coding, we noticed children's understanding about "relevancy" differentiated between oral composing and oral language conversation. Although oral composing and typical oral conversation both rely on children's language skills, children, who understood the concept of composing, mainly expressed ideas related to a given picture as a "topic" or "theme" in the composing task. These children tended to express a few short, yet relevant, ideas. They also paused with a statement at the end of their verbal description such as "that's good" and "that's all." In contrast, some children were capable of verbally expressing multiple ideas with long sentences, but these sentences were primarily not relevant to the picture but about their personal experience. These children also tended to ask irrelevant questions (e.g. "what cartoon do you like to watch") and look for responses (e.g. "what should I do?") from the research staff, as if they were having a typical language conversation and exchanging ideas with others. This pattern of responses appears to reflect children's understanding about the nature, the process, and the social function of composing. Given the limited research examining Chinese children's oral and written composing, additional studies are needed to examine approaches for eliciting and scoring early composing attempts so that children's early development about the understanding of composing as a social cultural process can be captured and investigated.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-25">Structure of Chinese Preschoolers' Early Writing Skills</hd> <p>As the first study to examine the factor structure of Chinese early writing, our findings suggest that Chinese early writing can be conceptualized as involving transcription and composing skills. In the two-factor model, Chinese children's ability to write recognizable Chinese characters (name writing, word dictation, and composing with recognizable characters) may collectively reflect their transcription skills, as indicated by good factor loadings across tasks. The characteristics of children's oral composing (number of characters in oral output, number of ideas, and level of relevance) appear to reflect children's capacities for creating or generating topic-related ideas. This finding is in keeping with existing, but limited, literature about the association between Chinese early reading and writing skills (Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref179">106</reflink>]). The transcription dimension of writing may suggest a universal pattern of children's ability to generate recognizable written texts in respective language contexts. Similar to research on the development of transcription skills in English (Blair & Savage, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref180">9</reflink>] Bloodgood, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref181">10</reflink>]; Levin et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref182">38</reflink>]; Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref183">64</reflink>]), Chinese children may also need to coordinate Chinese pre-reading skills, such as morphological awareness and visual-orthographic skills, to enact writing attempts and generate written texts (Tong et al., [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref184">82</reflink>]; Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib95" id="ref185">95</reflink>]; Ye et al., [<reflink idref="bib101" id="ref186">101</reflink>]). The dimension of generative knowledge may suggest children's understanding of the purpose of writing as a means of communication. Although the length of oral output may be related to children's language skills, the number of ideas and the level of relevance of oral output suggest children understand that composing serves a meaningful purpose (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref187">65</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref188">67</reflink>]).</p> <p>Unlike early writing studies conducted in English, the two dimensions of Chinese early writing were not significantly related. One reason for this finding may relate to the fact that Chinese characters are difficult to write, based upon phonology. Among the collected composing writing samples, we noticed that children wrote the characters (i.e., 妈 (mother), 水 (water), and 子 (son)) or radicals from these characters. This may illustrate that Chinese children rely mainly on their knowledge of non-phonological strokes and radicals to "build" Chinese characters. Although English-speaking children may enact estimated spelling based on letter-sound correspondence and phonological knowledge (Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref189">64</reflink>]), Chinese children may not write any characters unless they know the correspondence between specific Chinese characters and the words from their oral output. This also may provide an alternative explanation for why one-third of children declined to write down their oral output.</p> <p>Another explanation for the lack of a significant correlation between the two dimensions of writing in this study could be a function of how the early composing task elicited children's composing skills. The composing task in our study simulates a book reading and storytelling context. Some researchers believe, however, that authentic visual prompts related to children's own personal experience may work better at capturing composing skills. For example, Rowe and Wilson ([<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref190">74</reflink>]) invited children to write a caption for a photo of themselves playing in the classroom and to label the page with their name. Children were prompted to describe the photo orally and then write down their oral output. Because the creation of a decontextualized story may be more cognitively challenging for children than describing previous experiences with visual prompts, additional research is needed to explore how Chinese children experience different types of composing tasks relates to their ability to generate ideas orally and through their writing.</p> <p>Findings from this study also bring up considerations for how composing is then coded from children's oral and written responses. Existing early composing studies within English language contexts typically score children's written texts not only for conventionality (e.g., spelling, handwriting), structure (e.g., discourse, ideas, coherence; Bigozzi & Vettori, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref191">5</reflink>]), and processes (e.g., oral output; Coates, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref192">20</reflink>]), but also for intentionality (i.e., oral output-written text match; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref193">67</reflink>]). In many English composing tasks, researchers ask children to read their written text after they have made marks on paper to capture their ideas. When elicited in this manner, the oral-written text match can be captured and scored (Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref194">74</reflink>]). Because most children in this sample did not generate written text with more than two Chinese characters, we were unable to code children's oral-written text match and include it in the proposed model. As oral-written text match is designed to tap into children's understanding about the connection between oral and written language and the ability to decode their own writing (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref195">65</reflink>]), not including this variable in the final model may have resulted in the lack of a significant correlation between the two dimensions of Chinese writing.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-26">Role of the Chinese Classroom Writing Environment</hd> <p>Consistent with existing studies of early childhood classrooms conducted in the United States, our study contained variability in the availability and accessibility of writing materials and in the frequency of writing instructional opportunities. On average, Chinese preschool classrooms provided limited materials that explicitly prompted children to enact writing actions during the day, and none of the classrooms had a designated writing center, a recommended best practice for supporting early writing skills (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref196">28</reflink>]). Across classrooms, common writing instruments and materials, such as markers, papers, and crayons, were stored and presented in the art center, a finding also noted in many US classrooms (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref197">69</reflink>]).</p> <p>Although teacher- and child-generated environmental prints can be seen in most classrooms, teachers' explicit writing instruction (e.g., modeling the writing process, scaffolding children's writing attempts) and children's independent writing attempts occurred infrequently. These findings may reflect the influence of existing early childhood teaching standards in China that have a more explicit focus on early reading development than on writing development. Teachers in Mainland China are discouraged from providing explicit instruction of early literacy skills, as concerns exist about the pushing down of elementary content into the early childhood years. Although a study by Chan et al. ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref198">18</reflink>]) indicates that Chinese teachers individualize writing supports for preschool age children in Hong Kong, such interactions rarely occurred in our observations. Differences in the nature of learning environments in Hong Kong and Mainland China preschool classrooms are noted by Li et al. ([<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref199">39</reflink>]). Because Hong Kong teaching standards call for early literacy instruction in classrooms, Hong Kong teachers reported more frequent and explicit literacy instruction than teachers from Beijing. Li and Rao ([<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref200">44</reflink>]) compared Chinese preschool teachers' instruction in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Similar to our findings, Beijing teachers, in comparison to those in Hong Kong and Singapore, did not actively and intentionally promote early literacy skills in the classroom. Such discrepancies in early Chinese literacy instruction contribute to the finding that Hong Kong and Singapore preschoolers had significantly better Chinese early literacy skills than did children from Beijing.</p> <p>Another factor, low frequency writing instruction, may be related to the large classroom size of participating classrooms. Existing Chinese national policy (i.e., National Preschool Administration Policy, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref201">52</reflink>]) recommends 30–35 children per preschool classroom that serves children between the ages of 4 and 6 (Ministry of Education of The People's Republic of China, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref202">52</reflink>]). Classrooms in this study had an average of 40 children enrolled, and some public preschool classrooms had more than 50 children per classroom due to high demand within the local community. Such large classroom sizes may be one reason that we observed Chinese teachers' implementing primary learning activities in the format of whole-class large group activities, which limited the amount of time for children's free-exploration in learning centers (Liu et al., [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref203">47</reflink>]). Such classroom dynamics are likely to make writing instruction challenging to implement.</p> <p>Despite the incidental occurrence of Chinese teachers' writing instruction, our analyses showed that writing focused interactions were significantly associated with children's transcription skills. This finding is in keeping with the existing literature on the role of teachers' writing instruction in children's early writing development (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref204">8</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref205">27</reflink>]). Although teachers' explicit writing instruction occurred incidentally and structured writing activities or routines were not observed, Chinese teachers did support children's self-initiated writing attempts during classroom art activities by asking children to write their names "from left to right, in a line" or by writing down children's oral output on artwork. In other words, although Chinese preschool teachers were not providing explicit and intentional scaffolding to children's writing attempts, they certainly were not limiting or discouraging children's self-exploration of writing. Although Chinese children in this study had relatively limited exposure to written Chinese text in the classroom (e.g., charts, magazines, maps) that demonstrated the uses and purposes of writing, we observed some teachers' guiding children to copy Chinese characters. Previous research demonstrates that children who receive guidance about copying Chinese characters with an explanation of Pinyin knowledge and/or morphological knowledge progress significantly more than their peers in Chinese word reading and Chinese word dictation tasks (Wang & McBride, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref206">93</reflink>]). Given the relative complex orthographic nature of Chinese, teachers' scaffolding of Chinese children's handwriting skills through practices that involve copying characters may be beneficial to their development of transcription skills.</p> <p>In contrast to the significant association between classroom writing experiences and children's transcription skills, we found no association between classroom writing experiences and children's composing skills. Because this study is the first to attempt to link preschool classroom writing environments to children's composing, we note multiple possible reasons for this null association. First, findings may indicate that teachers were not providing children with sufficient high-quality scaffolding to support their idea generation. Observational studies of early childhood classrooms in an English language context suggest that teachers' scaffolds tend to focus explicitly on handwriting skills, whereas experiences designed to support children's understanding of the writing process and sociocultural values of writing are more implicit (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref207">8</reflink>]). As articulated recently by Bingham et al. ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref208">7</reflink>]), such low-level scaffolds typically focus on completing a mechanical handwriting task (e.g., tracing dots to create a letter) or spelling a word with a sociocultural context (e.g., spelling a CVC word by dictation). Because composing skills, as measured in this study, required children to create a set of logically related ideas about a character's thoughts or feelings, children may have needed high-level scaffolding support from teachers to extend, explain, and compare a variety of concepts and ideas (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref209">7</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref210">69</reflink>]). For example, teachers may need to actively guide children to generate concrete ideas for a specific topic, prompt children to verbally express their ideas, help children to recognize the correspondence between written text and oral output, and model writing actions.</p> <p>A second explanation for the null findings may relate to how teachers conceptualize early writing skills and what practices they think are key to supporting such skills (see Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref211">7</reflink>]). Consistent with studies in the U.S. (Bingham & Gerde, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref212">6</reflink>] Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref213">29</reflink>]), teachers in this sample may believe that early writing is more about correctly forming characters than it is about composing text. Hence, expecting high-level scaffolds that ask children to explain their ideas may not be as culturally relevant to practices that teachers within the Chinese Mainland believe support children's learning. Although, in the early 2000s, some researchers reported that Chinese preschool teachers were more likely to endorse teacher-centered and academic skills-orientated instructional beliefs (Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib92" id="ref214">92</reflink>]), teacher-led explicit and direct literacy instruction is often viewed currently by teachers and government stakeholders as negative indicators of "pushing down elementary teaching into early childhood" (幼儿园小学化; Xu, [<reflink idref="bib98" id="ref215">98</reflink>]). This appears to be echoed in observational studies in China that use Western-originated measures advocating for teachers' explicit scaffolding. For example, Li et al. ([<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref216">43</reflink>]) used the Chinese Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (Chinese version of ECERS-R; Harms et al., [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref217">31</reflink>]) and found that classroom instruction was of moderately low quality. In recent years, many Chinese childcare centers have begun to promote a play-based learning curriculum and child-centered responsive teaching practices in preschool classrooms (Hu et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref218">33</reflink>]). High-level scaffolding strategies, such as explaining Pinyin and morphological knowledge, as well as writing (i.e., Wang & McBride, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref219">93</reflink>]), however, may be challenging to implement in many Chinese preschool classrooms that serve a large number of children.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-27">Limitations and Future Directions</hd> <p>Because this was an exploratory study, there are certain limitations that need to be acknowledged. First, the data are correlational in nature and represent a snapshot of a small and select group of young children within one Chinese community. Future research is needed to verify these findings and to examine the longitudinal trajectories of the two dimensions of children's early writing skills. It may be possible that Chinese children decode Chinese characters based on their visual-orthographic features in the early years and then once they develop an understanding of Pinyin decoding system and phonological decoding rules they may shift to focusing on phonological features. Future studies should investigate the interplay among Chinese reading and writing across the early childhood period with consideration of other prereading (e.g., morphological awareness; McBride & Wang, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref220">50</reflink>]) and/or cognitive factors (e.g., executive functioning; Zhang, Bingham, et al., [<reflink idref="bib106" id="ref221">106</reflink>]) may support these skills.</p> <p>Second, as the purpose of this study was to examine how early writing environments relate to children's early writing skills, we did not examine the contribution of children's home environments to children's writing development. Home environments are another critical social cultural context for supporting early writing skills. As previous studies suggest that Chinese parents may actively support children's writing attempts at home (e.g., Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref222">41</reflink>]; Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref223">40</reflink>]), future research should investigate how classroom and home environments collectively and uniquely support children's early writing development.</p> <p>Third, in this study, we collected data using a finite number of early writing measures, as few have been validated for use with Chinese preschool-aged children. We had intended to use a Chinese character-copying task (i.e., delayed copying; Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref224">94</reflink>]) but found that it was too difficult for the children in this sample to complete, as it requires children to read five cards with Chinese characters for five seconds and then write down the characters from memory. Although we used a measure of early composing that has been validated in English contexts, we acknowledge the importance of eliciting composing skills with more than one task. Future research could consider integrating a culturally and developmentally appropriate measure of a Chinese character-copying task and examine its role in the dimension of transcription and/or composing skills. For example, researchers could develop a copying focused task that invites children to reproduce increasingly complex combinations of strokes, radicals, and Chinese characters. Given previous research demonstrating how copying might support early writing development (Wang & McBride, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref225">93</reflink>]) and the fact that some teachers in this sample encouraged copying, additional research is needed to examine how this practice may support Chinese children's writing development.</p> <p>Fourth, we conducted this study with a theoretical framework developed for understanding children's writing development within alphabetic language contexts (e.g., Berninger & Swanson, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref226">3</reflink>] Juel et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref227">35</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref228">63</reflink>]). Because there is such limited research into young Chinese children's writing development, we may have overlooked certain practices that support children's early writing and key features of composing and transcription skills. For example, Chinese calligraphy writing practice (书法) is a common handwriting practice that involves copying Chinese classic poems or writing Chinese characters in a decorative manner, using a soft-tipped brush and ink (Kao, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref229">36</reflink>]). Some children in this study were observed working with semi-transparent paper over a large Chinese character print to trace all strokes of the character (描红) during free-choice play time. Such calligraphy writing is a popular learning activity at home or in the classroom, and some may argue that, given its play-based and artistic nature, it helps children to understand stroke sequencing in learning to write Chinese characters (Law et al., [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref230">37</reflink>]; Wang et al., [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref231">94</reflink>]). Future research is needed to develop and refine the proposed conceptualization of Chinese early writing to investigate other dimensions of writing that may be culturally unique in the Chinese language context more fully.</p> <p>Related to this last point, additional research is needed to further refine or develop the WRITE classroom observational tool (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref232">27</reflink>]) for use in Chinese contexts. Although we allowed observers to note materials that might be used for writing, additional modifications of the tool may be needed to ensure that it adequately captures Chinese social and cultural writing practices. For example, Chinese childcare centers tend to arrange a designated outdoor area, such as a hallway or rooftop patio, as a common activity area shared by multiple classrooms. We observed several daily routine activities in which children from several classrooms in the same grade level came together to do activities that involved a literacy learning component (e.g., writing characters in the air) and in which the teachers from the same grade level would form a team to guide and manage children. Some researchers have recognized issues related to Western-developed classroom observation tools, such as ECERS-R (Hu et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref233">34</reflink>]; Li et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref234">43</reflink>]), and have modified them to capture teachers' large-group instruction. More observational studies of Chinese early childhood classrooms are needed to understand the sociocultural merit of unique teaching modes and their contribution to children's early writing development. In addition, while teachers' writing instruction was captured during a classroom observation, we did not investigate the factors that contribute to teachers' classroom teaching practices. It is meaningful for future research to examine how Chinese teachers' knowledge and beliefs in early writing development may shape their classroom teaching practices of writing skills as recent research suggests positive linkages (Bingham & Gerde, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref235">6</reflink>]; Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref236">7</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-28">Conclusion</hd> <p>This study investigated the characteristics of Chinese preschoolers' early writing skills and their association with the classroom writing environment in Mainland China. A two-factor model was found to effectively describe the structure of Chinese early writing skills that involve the dimensions of transcription skills and composing skills. Findings from our study give a first glimpse into the early writing environments and instructional opportunities present in Chinese early childhood classrooms. Although we document that Chinese classroom writing environment is generally of low quality, teachers' writing instruction is nevertheless significantly associated with children's transcription writing skills. Additional research is needed into the development of Chinese children's early writing skills and how early childhood programs can best support this development.</p> <hd id="AN0181909711-29">Disclosure Statement</hd> <p>No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).</p> <ref id="AN0181909711-30"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref12" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Aram, D. (2005). Continuity in children's literacy achievements: A longitudinal perspective from kindergarten to school. 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Header DbId: eric
DbLabel: ERIC
An: EJ1455744
AccessLevel: 3
PubType: Academic Journal
PubTypeId: academicJournal
PreciseRelevancyScore: 0
IllustrationInfo
Items – Name: Title
  Label: Title
  Group: Ti
  Data: Association between Young Chinese Children's Early Writing Skills and the Chinese Preschool Classroom Writing Environment
– Name: Language
  Label: Language
  Group: Lang
  Data: English
– Name: Author
  Label: Authors
  Group: Au
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Chenyi+Zhang%22">Chenyi Zhang</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Xiao+Zhang%22">Xiao Zhang</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Gary+E%2E+Bingham%22">Gary E. Bingham</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Liying+Zhang%22">Liying Zhang</searchLink>
– Name: TitleSource
  Label: Source
  Group: Src
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Early+Education+and+Development%22"><i>Early Education and Development</i></searchLink>. 2025 36(1):102-128.
– Name: Avail
  Label: Availability
  Group: Avail
  Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
– Name: PeerReviewed
  Label: Peer Reviewed
  Group: SrcInfo
  Data: Y
– Name: Pages
  Label: Page Count
  Group: Src
  Data: 27
– Name: DatePubCY
  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: TypeDocument
  Label: Document Type
  Group: TypDoc
  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
– Name: Audience
  Label: Education Level
  Group: Audnce
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Early+Childhood+Education%22">Early Childhood Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Preschool+Education%22">Preschool Education</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+Skills%22">Writing Skills</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Preschools%22">Preschools</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Preschool+Children%22">Preschool Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Classroom+Environment%22">Classroom Environment</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+Instruction%22">Writing Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Accessibility+%28for+Disabled%29%22">Accessibility (for Disabled)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Chinese%22">Chinese</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Written+Language%22">Written Language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Oral+Language%22">Oral Language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Beginning+Writing%22">Beginning Writing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Instructional+Materials%22">Instructional Materials</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Access+to+Information%22">Access to Information</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Barriers%22">Barriers</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Geographic Terms
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22China%22">China</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1080/10409289.2024.2360876
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 1040-9289<br />1556-6935
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: This study describes the early writing environments of 16 preschool classrooms in China and 155 Chinese preschoolers' early writing skills as assessed through name writing, word dictation, and early composing tasks. The classroom early writing environment consists of children's accessibility to writing materials, and teachers' writing instruction. Preschool writing samples were coded for children's ability to generate both oral (e.g. number of words and ideas) and written language (e.g. recognizable Chinese characters). Confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical linear modeling were conducted to investigate the structure of Chinese preschoolers' writing skill and to examine its association with classroom writing environment. Research Findings: Results showed that Chinese preschool children could independently generate a variety of writing samples without adult support. Early Chinese writing skills represent two factors, namely (a) the ability to transcribe recognizable characters (transcription skill), and (b) the ability to generate meaningful ideas (composing skill). Teachers' writing instruction was significantly associated with children's writing skill, although the frequency was low. Practice or Policy: The findings revealed the evident complexities of Chinese orthography, while suggesting a universal impact of teachers' scaffolding to young children's early writing. The study prepared an evidence base for future classroom-based early literacy intervention programs.
– Name: AbstractInfo
  Label: Abstractor
  Group: Ab
  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1455744
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1455744
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1080/10409289.2024.2360876
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 27
        StartPage: 102
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Writing Skills
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Preschools
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Preschool Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Classroom Environment
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Writing Instruction
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Accessibility (for Disabled)
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Chinese
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Written Language
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Oral Language
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Beginning Writing
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Instructional Materials
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Access to Information
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Barriers
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: China
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Association between Young Chinese Children's Early Writing Skills and the Chinese Preschool Classroom Writing Environment
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
    HasContributorRelationships:
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Chenyi Zhang
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Xiao Zhang
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Gary E. Bingham
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Liying Zhang
    IsPartOfRelationships:
      – BibEntity:
          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 01
              Type: published
              Y: 2025
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 1040-9289
            – Type: issn-electronic
              Value: 1556-6935
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 36
            – Type: issue
              Value: 1
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Early Education and Development
              Type: main
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