Training Orthographic and Sentence Structures Helps Poor Readers in Chinese

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.

Keywords:

• Chinese reading
• Chinese students
• component tasks
• specific learning difficulties
• training orthographic structure
• writing

Acknowledgements

The study was assisted in part with a grant from the Hong Kong Education Bureau (HKEDB). We thank HKEDB, the principals, teachers, students and their parents for their assistance to and participation in the project. We are grateful to our research assistants for their work. The views expressed are ours and do not necessarily represent those of HKEDB. The authors had no financial or other conflicts of interest.