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Article In: Written Language & Literacy
Vol. 29:2 (2026) ► pp.211–239

Differentiating Chinese FL readers by component skills

Insights from cluster and discriminant analysis

 | Nantong Institute of Technology
 | Universiti Putra Malaysia
 | Universiti Putra Malaysia
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Although a substantial body of research has been conducted on the contribution of component skills to reading comprehension, relatively few studies have investigated which skills most clearly differentiate readers across comprehension levels. This study investigated this question among Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) readers at different comprehension levels. Forty-four CFL children in a Malaysian international school were assessed on their knowledge of morphemes, vocabulary, grammar, lexical inference and reading comprehension. Based on overall reading performance, a two-step cluster analysis identified two groups of readers: low- and high-skilled readers. Subsequent discriminant analysis indicated that lexical inference had the strongest association with group differentiation among the component skills examined. These exploratory findings highlight that lexical inference, as an integrative word-level inferencing process, may be particularly relevant to differences in CFL reading performance. The sequential use of cluster and discriminant analyses provides a preliminary analytical approach that requires replication in larger, independent samples. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Lower-level linguistic knowledge supporting access and textbase construction
      • 2.1.1Morphological knowledge
      • 2.1.2Vocabulary knowledge
      • 2.1.3Grammar knowledge
    • 2.2Lexical inference as an integrative word-level process
      • 2.2.1Lexical inference
    • 2.3CFL reading in the Malaysian multilingual and non-immersive context
    • 2.4Summary and research gap
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Measures
      • 3.2.1Morphological knowledge
      • 3.2.2Vocabulary knowledge
      • 3.2.3Grammar knowledge
      • 3.2.4Lexical inference
      • 3.2.5Reading comprehension
    • 3.3Procedures
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Descriptive statistics and correlations
    • 4.2Cluster analysis
    • 4.3Discriminant analysis
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (60)
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