Exploring Reading-Spelling Connection as Locus of Dyslexia in Chinese

• Published in: Annals of dyslexia Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 239 - 259
• Main Authors: Leong, Che Kan, Cheng, Pui-Wan, Lam, Catherine C. C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States The International Dyslexia Association 01.01.2000; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Allography; Asian Continental Ancestry Group - psychology; Chinese; Chinese languages; Data processing; Departments; Dyslexia; Dyslexia - diagnosis; Dyslexia - psychology; Educational Change; Female; Handwriting; Humans; Instructional Materials; Language Aptitude; Male; Mandarin Chinese; Multilingualism; Orthographies; PART V: Reading Disabilities in Other Languages; Phonetics; Phonology; Photic Stimulation - methods; Random Allocation; Reaction Time; Reading; Reading Difficulties; Reading Instruction; Romanization; Semantics; Semiotics; Speech; Spelling; Strokes; Teaching Methods; Verbal Communication; Words; Writing Instruction; Writing Skills; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0736-9387; 1934-7243
• DOI: 10.1007/s11881-000-0024-4

This paper advances the argument that in learning to read/spell Chinese characters and words, it is important for learners to understand the role of the component parts. These constituents consist of phonetic and semantic radicals, or bujians, made up of clusters of strokes in their proper sequence. Beginning readers/spellers need to be sensitive to the positional hierarchy and internal structure of these constituent parts. Those Chinese children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia tend to have more difficulties in spelling Chinese characters and in writing to dictation than in reading. A lexical decision study with two groups of tertiary students differing in their Chinese language ability was carried out to test their efficiency in processing real and pseudo characters as a function of printed frequency of the characters, and teh consistency of their component semantic radicals. there is some evidence that even for adult readers differing in their Chinese language ability, lexicality, frequency of characters and the consistency of the semantic radicals affect accurate and rapid character identification. Suggestions for research and teaching approaches are made to enhance the analysis and synthesis of the phonetic and semantic radicals to promote efficient reading and spelling in Chinese.