ERIC Number: EJ973089
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Aug
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0922-4777
EISSN: N/A
Identification of Sub-Types of Students with Learning Disabilities in Reading and Its Implications for Chinese Word Recognition and Instructional Methods in Hong Kong Primary Schools
Ho, Fuk-chuen; Siegel, Linda
Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, v25 n7 p1547-1571 Aug 2012
This paper consists of three studies. The first study aimed to identify sub-types of students with learning disabilities in reading. Based on the dual-route model of reading, words may be read using either a lexical (words are recognized as wholes) or a sub-lexical (words are recognized through grapheme-phoneme correspondence) procedure. Castles and Coltheart (1993) provided evidence for the existence of these two mechanisms in English reading. They suggested that deficits in one and/or the other mechanism would lead to different patterns of reading disability. Surface dyslexia results from an impairment of the lexical procedure with an intact phonological route to reading. Phonological dyslexia results from a deficit in the grapheme-phoneme transformation mechanism. A higher percentage of surface dyslexia was identified in the present study. The aim of the second study was to analyze reading errors to support the existence of surface and phonological dyslexic patterns in Chinese reading. The results showed that students with surface dyslexic pattern made more phonological errors, whereas students with phonological dyslexic pattern made more semantic errors. These two studies indicate that students with learning disabilities could have different strengths and weaknesses and could have different preferences for recognizing Chinese characters and different responses to instructional methods. The third study was designed to test the effects of different teaching methods and different kinds of Chinese characters on students with learning disabilities. In general, the analytic method was found more effective for students with surface dyslexic pattern and the whole-word method for those with the phonological dyslexic pattern. The findings of this study showed the importance of identifying the strengths of the different sub-types of readers and the need to choose appropriate instructional methods accordingly.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Chinese, Word Recognition, Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, Reading, Elementary School Students, Phonology, Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence, Teaching Methods, Reading Instruction
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Hong Kong
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A