Speaker: Dr Patcy Yeung, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong 

Model building and research on writing development in alphabetic languages has a history of more than 30 years. Research on Chinese writing development, however, is still at an early stage.To examine the interrelationships among transcription skills, oral language skills, working memory, and Chinese written composition in relation to the simple view of writing, a total of 249 Chinese children in Grade 1, Grade 3 and Grade 5 in Hong Kong were administered measures of nonverbal reasoning ability, transcription skills (stroke sequence knowledge, word spelling and handwriting fluency), oral language skills (word definition, and syntactic skills), working memory and Chinese written composition. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that transcription skills (word spelling and handwriting fluency), syntactic skills, and working memory were unique predictors of Chinese written composition.  Findings suggest that while the three component skills of writing (transcription skills, oral language skills and working memory) in the models of writing in alphabetic languages were significant predictors of Chinese writing, transcription skills play a particularly important role in Chinese written composition across elementary grades.