Native-like orthographic awareness despite limited phonological-semantic development: Evidence from early Chinese-learning bilingual kindergarteners

Despite growing numbers of bilingual children acquiring Chinese in early childhood, little is known about emergent Chinese literacy before formal instruction. We examined 116 Beijing kindergarteners: 79 early Chinese-learning bilinguals from diverse non-Mandarin L1 backgrounds (ages 2–5) and 37 native Chinese peers (ages 4–5). Experiment 1 revealed asymmetric age-related patterns in the bilingual children: phonological knowledge (character–syllable mappings) was above chance by age 2, while visual-graphic discrimination remained at chance until age 4, then reached near ceiling by age 5. Experiment 2 compared 40 of these children (ages 4–5) with native peers on literacy measures. Bilinguals achieved native-like orthographic awareness ( d = .11) despite significant gaps in word reading ( d = 1.05), vocabulary ( d = 1.13), phonological awareness ( d = 1.29), morphological awareness ( d = 1.33) and rapid naming ( d = 1.28). Vocabulary uniquely predicted reading for both groups ( β = .53), highlighting its critical role in early L2 Chinese literacy.