Children’s failure to develop simple word decoding skills in early years is linked to future poor reading, school dropout, and poor health [1] [2]. Letter-sound knowledge is needed for word decoding development;howev...Children’s failure to develop simple word decoding skills in early years is linked to future poor reading, school dropout, and poor health [1] [2]. Letter-sound knowledge is needed for word decoding development;however questions remain on what types of letter-sound knowledge help children decode simple words [3]. This study investigated the differences in mean number of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words decoded between two groups of children, a letter-sound reading group and non letter-sound reading group. Children aged 4 to 6 in both groups, attempted to decode a variety of simple words such as tan, sit, hen, pig, dot, and fun. Analysis determined word decoding differences existed between the two groups. The alternate hypothesis was accepted;the letter-sound reading group had a significantly higher mean in number of consonant-vowel-consonant words decoded compared to the non letter-sound reading group. The study informs the teaching approaches needed to improve early decoding skills showing letter-sound reading ability is an important step for learning to decode simple consonant-vowel-consonant words.展开更多
Phonics is the foundation on which the teaching of English is based. It enables students to read and spell words independently. The aim of Phonics teaching is to show students how the English letter-sound-word system ...Phonics is the foundation on which the teaching of English is based. It enables students to read and spell words independently. The aim of Phonics teaching is to show students how the English letter-sound-word system works, in other words, the ‘mechanics’ of the language.展开更多
Integrating letters and sounds are essential for successful reading in alphabetic languages. It remains unclear if native speakers of non-alphabetic languages integrate letters and sounds in reading an alphabetic lang...Integrating letters and sounds are essential for successful reading in alphabetic languages. It remains unclear if native speakers of non-alphabetic languages integrate letters and sounds in reading an alphabetic language in the same way as native alphabetic readers do.Chinese is a morpho-syllabic system(each character corresponds to one syllable) and contrasts sharply with alphabetic languages such as English. Several f MRI studies have shown that native Chinese speakers apply their native language system to read English words. By using the crossmodal mismatch negativity(MMN) paradigm, we directly investigated letter–sound integration for reading in English among native Chinese speakers. To investigate the effect of native language background on letter–sound integration in second language reading, a group of native Korean English learners served as a comparison group. We compared MMN responses between an auditory only condition(only vowels presented) and two audiovisual conditions(AV0,vowel presented synchronously with the corresponding letter; AV200, the letter presented 200 ms before the corresponding vowel) for both native Chinese and native Korean speakers. Native Chinese speakers demonstrated significantly attenuated MMN amplitudes in audiovisual conditions compared with the auditory only condition,regardless of their phonological decoding speed. In contrast, native Korean speakers showed amplified amplitude MMN in AV200 compared with that in the auditory only condition. The results suggest that native language may shape the brain responses of second language learners to reading a second language in the early stages. Native nonalphabetic language speakers may be unable to use visual information to facilitate their phonological processing in the early stage while native alphabetic language speakers are capable of integrating letter sounds automatically.展开更多
文摘Children’s failure to develop simple word decoding skills in early years is linked to future poor reading, school dropout, and poor health [1] [2]. Letter-sound knowledge is needed for word decoding development;however questions remain on what types of letter-sound knowledge help children decode simple words [3]. This study investigated the differences in mean number of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words decoded between two groups of children, a letter-sound reading group and non letter-sound reading group. Children aged 4 to 6 in both groups, attempted to decode a variety of simple words such as tan, sit, hen, pig, dot, and fun. Analysis determined word decoding differences existed between the two groups. The alternate hypothesis was accepted;the letter-sound reading group had a significantly higher mean in number of consonant-vowel-consonant words decoded compared to the non letter-sound reading group. The study informs the teaching approaches needed to improve early decoding skills showing letter-sound reading ability is an important step for learning to decode simple consonant-vowel-consonant words.
文摘Phonics is the foundation on which the teaching of English is based. It enables students to read and spell words independently. The aim of Phonics teaching is to show students how the English letter-sound-word system works, in other words, the ‘mechanics’ of the language.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(31221003)National Basic Research Program of China(2014CB846103)
文摘Integrating letters and sounds are essential for successful reading in alphabetic languages. It remains unclear if native speakers of non-alphabetic languages integrate letters and sounds in reading an alphabetic language in the same way as native alphabetic readers do.Chinese is a morpho-syllabic system(each character corresponds to one syllable) and contrasts sharply with alphabetic languages such as English. Several f MRI studies have shown that native Chinese speakers apply their native language system to read English words. By using the crossmodal mismatch negativity(MMN) paradigm, we directly investigated letter–sound integration for reading in English among native Chinese speakers. To investigate the effect of native language background on letter–sound integration in second language reading, a group of native Korean English learners served as a comparison group. We compared MMN responses between an auditory only condition(only vowels presented) and two audiovisual conditions(AV0,vowel presented synchronously with the corresponding letter; AV200, the letter presented 200 ms before the corresponding vowel) for both native Chinese and native Korean speakers. Native Chinese speakers demonstrated significantly attenuated MMN amplitudes in audiovisual conditions compared with the auditory only condition,regardless of their phonological decoding speed. In contrast, native Korean speakers showed amplified amplitude MMN in AV200 compared with that in the auditory only condition. The results suggest that native language may shape the brain responses of second language learners to reading a second language in the early stages. Native nonalphabetic language speakers may be unable to use visual information to facilitate their phonological processing in the early stage while native alphabetic language speakers are capable of integrating letter sounds automatically.
