The effect of metalinguistic awareness on bilingual vocabulary knowledge in Chinese deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students

This study aimed to explore the effect of metalinguistic awareness, especially phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), on the bilingual vocabulary knowledge of Chinese DHH students ( N = 35, mean age = 15.09 years), after controlling for the effect of non-verbal intelligence. Participants completed measures of non-verbal intelligence, Chinese PA, Chinese MA, and vocabulary knowledge in both Chinese and English. The results showed that PA was mildly related to English vocabulary knowledge ( r = 0.348, p < 0.05), while MA significantly correlated with either Chinese or English vocabulary knowledge ( r = 0.604, p < 0.01; r = 0.563, p < 0.01). Moreover, Chinese MA showed a strong predicting power for Chinese vocabulary knowledge (β = 0.407, t = 2.276, p < 0.05), while Chinese vocabulary knowledge exerted a potential predicting impact on English vocabulary knowledge (β = 0.378, t = 2.064, p < 0.05). Notably, this paper highlighted the important role of MA in Chinese vocabulary learning and the potential impact of Chinese vocabulary on English vocabulary knowledge for Chinese DHH students.