Training Orthographic and Sentence Structures Helps Poor Readers in Chinese |
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| Authors: | Che Kan Leong Man Koon Ho |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education , University of Saskatchewan , Saskatchewan , Canada;2. Department of Educational Psychology , The Chinese University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong , China;3. Department of Curriculum and Instruction , The Chinese University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong , China |
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| Abstract: | We trained 36 12-year-old Chinese students with reading disorders in the analysis, synthesis and integration of orthographic constituents of semantic and phonetic bujians (radicals); and also their writing (spelling and composing) skills. These target students were compared with 37 age-controls in a pre-test and post-test design on a number of reading literacy indicators predicated on the “Blueprint of the Reader”. The tasks were: essay writing; morphological compounding; correction of errors; segmentation; text comprehension; fluency; copying of words, and of texts; writing to dictation; and reading aloud words and text. A promax oblique structure analysis of the performance of the 73 students found the tasks clustered into four components. A two (group) × 11 (tasks) multivariate analysis of covariance with the pre-training tasks as covariates followed by analyses of variance showed that the experimental students outperformed their age-peers in essay writing, morphological compounding, correction of errors, text comprehension and reading text aloud. They were also highly satisfied with their training as shown in a questionnaire survey. |
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| Keywords: | Chinese reading Chinese students component tasks specific learning difficulties training orthographic structure writing |
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