Myrtle on Chinese

from Myrtle:

According to Diane McGuiness in her book, "Why Our Children Can't Read And What We Can Do About It"

Chinese is not logographic. She calls this a misconception due to the syllable structure of the Chinese language. "Just under half of all Chinese words are only one sylable long...a word and a syllable at the same time. Most Chinese syllables consist of ony two basic sound sequences CV and CVC. The Chinese language has very few consonant clusters or "blends" and a grand total of 1,277 tonal syllables...this open simple syllable structure means that the Chinese language is riddled with homophones, those words that sound alike with different meanings, which makes it necessary to use abouty 200 classifiers. Ninety percent of all Chinese words are written as compound signs, with the syllable sign and the classifier sign fused together."

Then she goes on...

"Harold Stevenson and a group of American, Japanese, and Chinese scientists tested over 2,000 fifth grade children in Taiwan, Sendai, and Minneapolis. The children read text of comparable difficulty, with similar vocabularies averaging around 7,000 words. What they discovered first is surprising. Tawainese children do not begin by memorizing the 1,277 syllable signs, as whole language teachers might imagine. Instead, they are taught the individual sounds of their language using a Roman alphabet...Once these sounds are mastered they begin to memorize the syllable characters..."

At any rate, she also says that they found out that the Chinese children in Beijing who did not learn to read this way had difficulty identifying Chinese words out of context.

And the source she cites for all this is,

Stevenson, HW, Stigler, JW, Lucker, W & Shin-ying, L (1982). Reading disabilities: The Case of Chinese, Japanese and English. Child Development, 53, 1164-83

Then to make it crystal clear she says, "No culture has ever used the word as the sole basis for a writing system. Not even the Chinese."

This is a bit over my head.

But fascinating.

I may have to order McGuiness' book. [update: done]

Speaking of books on reading, back when C. was in first grade I read Straight Talk about Reading by Susan Hall & Louisa Moats & thought it was great.

That was the book that gave me the factoid about 10% of kids spontaneously starting to read with systematic instruction in phonics.

Because Christopher spontaneously started to read early in the second half of his Kindergarten year, and because I was reading Hall & Moats at the time, I assumed he'd had systematic instruction in phonics at school. Now, of course, I wonder.

Another possibility: Divine Intervention. His teacher had told us, just two weeks before he began to read, that he was at risk for reading disability.

She based this in the fact that his handwriting was extremely poor. (She was right about that; bad handwriting is a flag).

Naturally I figured: OF COURSE.

WE'VE GOT TWO AUTISTIC KIDS; NOW WE'RE GONNA HAVE A DYSLEXIC KID, TOO.

Then two weeks later, voila. He was reading.

All of a sudden.

Out of the blue.

There is a God.