Exploring reading-spelling connection as locus of dyslexia in Chinese

Abstract

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 the 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.

Orthographic skills important to Chinese literacy development: the role of radical representation and orthographic memory of radicals

“…The basic graphic unit in Chinese, the character, represents a syllable as well as a morpheme. Each character is made up of radicals (or bujians), which consist of different strokes arranged sequentially, and combined in different configurations in characters (Leong, Cheng, & Lam, 2000). There are eight basic types of strokes (Law, Ki, Chung, Ko, & Lam, 1998).…”

Writing to dictation and handwriting performance among Chinese children with dyslexia: Relationships with orthographic knowledge and perceptual-motor skills

“…This is different from the English writing system that requires writers to produce written words from the fixed set of 26 letters on the horizontal grid lines (Figure 1). Leong et al (2000) suggested that the complex orthographic rules in Chinese writing system is particularly challenging for Chinese children with dyslexia to acquire the basic writing skills.…”

“…Many school activities also expect children to develop effective handwriting skills to transcribe printed information on the texts so as to produce written answers on papers (Feder & Majnemer, 2007). In a Chinese school population, children with dyslexia are more commonly observed with persistent difficulties in acquiring basic writing skills than reading skills (Leong, Cheng, & Lam, 2000). This study aimed at identifying the factors that may possibly explain different levels of writing difficulties among Chinese children with dyslexia.…”

Exploring the reading–writing connection in Chinese children with dyslexia in Hong Kong

“…Further, the child might need to call on a visual-spatial type of short-term memory system as well as a phonological working memory system (see Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993). Thus, for Chinese children with dyslexia, while there could be phonological deficits, there might also be other difficulties that are connected with the complexity of the Chinese characters and the different combinations that they form, suggesting that the listening-reading connection might assume less importance relative to other connections involving the four basic language skills (see also Leong, Cheng, & Lam, 2000).…”