Acquisition of Malay word recognition skills: lessons from low-progress early readers

Abstract

Malay is a consistent alphabetic orthography with complex syllable structures. The focus of this research was to investigate word recognition performance in order to inform reading interventions for low-progress early readers. Forty-six Grade 1 students were sampled and 11 were identified as low-progress readers. The results indicated that both syllable awareness and phoneme blending were significant predictors of word recognition, suggesting that both syllable and phonemic grain-sizes are important in Malay word recognition. Item analysis revealed a hierarchical pattern of difficulty based on the syllable and the phonic structure of the words. Error analysis identified the sources of errors to be errors due to inefficient syllable segmentation, oversimplification of syllables, insufficient grapheme-phoneme knowledge and inefficient phonemic code assembly. Evidence also suggests that direct instruction in syllable segmentation, phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme correspondence is necessary for low-progress readers to acquire word recognition skills. Finally, a logical sequence to teach grapheme-phoneme decoding in Malay is suggested.

Analysis of Malay word structure by pre-service special education teachers: foundation-level knowledge for remedial instruction

“…For example, despite the shallow orthography of Malay, beginning and low-performing readers still show traits in phonological processing deficits, including reduced abilities in recognising syllable borders (Lee & Wheldall, 2011). They still made significant word-recognition errors related to syllable structure, phonic structure and affixed words (Lee & Wheldall, 2011). This underlies the need for teachers, including special education teachers, to know basic Malay language constructs, and for teacher preparation programmes to explicitly teach this metalinguistic knowledge.…”

“…Casalis & LouisAlexandre, 2000;Denton, Hasbrouck, Weaver, & Riccio, 2000;Lee, Yeap, & Low, 2012;Maionchi-Pino, Magnan, & Ecalle, 2010;Wydell & Butterworth, 1999), which educators of bilingual and multilingual children need to be aware of (Lee, in review). For example, despite the shallow orthography of Malay, beginning and low-performing readers still show traits in phonological processing deficits, including reduced abilities in recognising syllable borders (Lee & Wheldall, 2011). They still made significant word-recognition errors related to syllable structure, phonic structure and affixed words (Lee & Wheldall, 2011).…”

“…Tatabahasa Dewan [Malay Grammar] by Karim et al (2004) and Tatabahasa Bahasa Melayu: Morfologi dan Sintaksis untuk Guru dan Pelajar [Malay Grammar: Morphology and Syntax for Teachers and Students] (Hassan, 2002), and previous studies related to Malay word structures (Lee, 2008;Lee & Wheldall, 2011). The criteria and assessment tasks are summarised in Table 1.…”

“…For a more detailed description on syllable structures in Malay, refer to . The word structure of Malay words can be described in terms of its syllabic and phonetic structure (Lee & Wheldall, 2011). For example 'sungai' (meaning: river) has a simple CV þ CV structure, but a more complex phonetic structure with a digraph (ng, /ŋ/) and a diphthong (ai, /ai/).…”

An Early Reading Assessment Battery for Multilingual Learners in Malaysia

“…It has 26 letters (a–z) similar to the English alphabet. There are three types of sounds in the Malay language: vowels (a, e, i, o, u) with e having 2 vowel sounds such as /e/ for ekor (tail) and /ǝ/ for emak (mother); diphthongs (ai, au, oi); and consonant sounds ( Lee and Wheldall, 2011 ). There are five digraphs: /gh/, /kh/, /ng/, /ny/, and /sy/.…”