honological awareness ( PA)      is the ability to analyze spoken or written language into its component sounds and to manipulate these smaller units．    PA is not  a single skill ，but includes different types of PA based on phonological units:      syllable awareness ，onset / rhyme awareness ，and phoneme awareness．          A literature review related to L2 PA shows that the development of PA is significantly affected by three kinds of linguistic experience:   1)  spoken language prior to alphabetic reading instruction ，2) alphabetic knowledge identified as a result of literacy or explicit training on the alphabetic principle ，and 3)       PA in the first lan- guage  ( L1) ． Most previous studies focus on children ’s PA in their  L1 or  L2 ;    only few  studies have  investigated  adults ’PA  in their  L2 ． This study  examines the development of  different levels  of  PA  in  English  of  Chinese  college  students  and  the  effect  of three  kinds of linguistic experience on the development:  PA in Chinese ，English competence ，and dialect．          Six PA tasks were de- signed to test four types of PA:   1) syllable oddity ，2)   syllable counting ，3)  onset oddity ，4)   rhyme oddity ，5)   phoneme oddity ， and 6)   phoneme counting．    The specific questions guiding this study  are:    1)  What  are the  characteristics  of  the  development  of Chinese college students ’English PA?  2)      What are the relationships between four types of PA and three kinds of linguistic expe- rience?  Results show :  1) Subjects ’performances on the four oddity tasks reveal a balanced development among each kind of PA; their scores on the syllable counting and phoneme counting tasks are significantly  inferior  to those  on the  oddity  tasks．    2) PA  in Chinese significantly  affects both overall PA and each kind of PA in English;      English competency has a significant effect on over- all PA in English and the hardest task of syllable counting;     and dialects have no effect on either overall PA or each kind of PA in English．  3)  These three kinds  of  linguistic  experience  interact  with  each  other  to  condition  the  development  of  PA  in  English． Learners draw  mainly  on their  L1 alphabetic  knowledge  to  complete  each  PA  task ，and  whether  English  competency  or  dialects has an effect  depends on their PA in Chinese．