<i>Akshara</i>–syllable mappings in Bengali: a language-specific skill for reading

Sircar, Shruti; Nag, Sonali

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139084642.023

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…These findings are in line with existing studies in other akshara orthographies showing that phoneme awareness emerges slowly when instruction is at the level of whole akshara (e.g., Nag, 2007;Nag & Snowling, 2011Nakamura et al, 2017;Prakash et al, 1993). They expand the previous research by showing rapid growth following instruction in diacritics, and confirm preliminary trends reported in Bengali (Sircar & Nag, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…While it is reasonable to predict that insights about decomposition become available only when children are explicitly shown how akshara break up into diacritic markers, there is to date no direct evidence for this hypothesis. What is known instead is that in groups receiving syllable-level, whole akshara instruction, many children in Grades 2 and 3 are at floor on phoneme manipulation tasks and that better readers show greater phonemic awareness (e.g., Nag, 2007); and when explicit teaching of decomposition begins early, gains in phonemic awareness are recorded earlier (e.g., Sircar & Nag, 2013). Because of the nature of Sinhala reading instruction in Sri Lanka, comparing Grades 4 and 5 offer a natural experiment on the relationship between akshara knowledge, word reading and phoneme awareness when decomposition is left to be inferred and when it is taught explicitly.…”

Section: Reading Instruction In Sinhalamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Instruction Matters to the Development of Phoneme Awareness and Its Relationship to Akshara Knowledge and Word Reading: Evidence from Sinhala

Wijaythilake

Parrila

Inoue

et al. 2018

Scientific Studies of Reading

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We examined whether global instruction of complex akshara and explicit phoneme-level instruction of akshara impact the development of phoneme awareness and its association with akshara knowledge and word reading accuracy. The participants were 100 Sinhala-speaking children from Grades 4 and 5 in Sri Lanka. Phoneme awareness showed stronger growth and a significant relationship with word reading accuracy and akshara knowledge only after children received explicit phoneme-level instruction in akshara construction. Both word reading accuracy and akshara knowledge predicted phoneme awareness, but the opposite was not true. The results suggest that phoneme awareness in Sinhala is sensitive to the method of reading instruction, and, contrary to the studies in alphabetic languages, it does not have a bidirectional relationship with reading. Phoneme-level instruction 3 Instruction matters to the development of phoneme awareness and its relationship to akshara knowledge and word reading: Evidence from Sinhala. A number of longitudinal and intervention studies have shown that phonological skills provide a critical foundation for learning to read in alphabetic orthographies and that the relationship between phonological skills and reading is bidirectional (e.g., Caravolas, Lervåg,

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Reading Instruction In Sinhalamentioning

confidence: 99%

Instruction Matters to the Development of Phoneme Awareness and Its Relationship to Akshara Knowledge and Word Reading: Evidence from Sinhala

Wijaythilake

Parrila

Inoue

et al. 2018

Scientific Studies of Reading

Self Cite

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“…Therefore, children do not find identification difficulties in with sets of akshara, because they are not required to process them at a phonemic level. Later, once children learn all syllabic‐level aksharas, they are introduced to the consonants with diacritics and ligature formation that require phonemic‐processing skills (Nag et al, ; Sircar & Nag, ). It is possible that late introduction to the concept of phonemic parsing might have been one of the contributing factors of the poor performance of children.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental dyslexia in Hindi readers: Is consistent sound‐symbol mapping an asset in reading? Evidence from phonological and visuospatial working memory

Bajre

Khan

2019

Dyslexia

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Phonological processing deficit is a hallmark of developmental dyslexia indicating a core cognitive dysfunction. Importance of working memory in reading and its association with the tasks measuring phonological processing is also debated in research. The present study investigates the role of working memory, phonological, and orthographic processing in Hindi‐speaking dyslexic children (22 dyslexic and 23 control, of Grade 4). Hindi has a consistent symbol‐sound mapping with an extensive list of visually complex graphemes. Although consistent symbol‐sound mapping facilitates reading, graphemic complexity has its cost on memory. A range of tasks measuring phonological processing, working memory, and orthographic knowledge was designed and administered. Dyslexic children scored significantly lower than controls not only on working memory tasks but also on the tasks of phonological processing and orthographic knowledge. Moreover, the difference in working memory between dyslexic and normal children was more pronounced with increased task complexity. These results highlight complex relationships between working memory, phonological and orthographic processing together with visual attentional processing in Hindi, that contribute to the reading deficits encountered by children with dyslexia. Their respective contributions are considered in the discussion with some of the visual and phonological features of Hindi orthography and their associated effects in reading.

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“…However, unlike other transparent orthographies like Spanish, for example, akshara learners need a longer time to master decoding possibly because of an extraordinarily large set of syllabographs that must be learned. Studies of akshara processing have shown that both syllable and phoneme awareness are needed for word decoding (Joshi, ; Nag, Snowling, Quinlan, & Hulme, ; Reddy & Koda, ; Sircar & Nag, ; Tiwari, ) but that the pace of acquisition of syllabic awareness is faster than that of phonemic awareness, with increasing sensitivity to subsyllabic information developing slower than syllable level awareness (Nag, ; Vasanta, ). These studies highlight the dual syllabic and phonemic requirements for decoding acquisition in akshara and suggest that this relationship is different at different levels of reading mastery.…”

Section: Research On Reading Acquisition In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%