Reading Chinese and Reading English: Similarities, Differences, and Second-Language Reading. In: Berninger VW, editor. The Varieties of Orthographic Knowledge. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 1994. pp. 73-109. [DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3492-9_3]

Graphic and Phonological Processing in Chinese Character Identification

A backward-masking procedure was used to examine the effect of graphic, phonological, and graphic-and-phonological information on Chinese character identification. Twenty-two Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese graduate students were asked to write down lists of paired characters presented sequentially in a tachistoscope. Analysis of variance performed on the target identification accuracy scores indicated that graphic information plays an essential role in Chinese character identification. Within the same time frame, phonological information, whether activated alone or in conjunction with graphic information, does not enhance the accuracy of identification. The present findings are discussed in relation to those of Perfetti and Zhang's (1991) Chinese character study and Perfetti, Bell, and Delaney's (1988) English word study.

Orthographic and phonological processing skills in reading and spelling in Persian/English bilinguals

The concurrent development of reading and spelling in English and Persian were examined in a sample of bilingual children. The objective was to compare how phonological and orthographic processing skills contribute to reading and spelling for two alphabetic languages that differ drastically. English orthography is characterised by both polyphony (i.e., a grapheme representing more than one phoneme) and polygraphy (i.e., a phoneme represented by more than one grapheme) which results in a complex script to read and write. In contrast, vowelised-Persian orthography is characterised by polygraphy only, which results in a simple script to read but more complex to write. Fifty-five Iranian children in grades 2 and 3, who had lived in English-speaking Canada for an average of 4 years, were tested on word reading and spelling in English and Persian. We found that the predictors of reading performance were similar across languages: Phonological and orthographic processing skills each predicted unique variance in word reading in English and in Persian once we had controlled for grade level, vocabulary, and reading experience. As expected, the predictors of spelling performance differed across language: Spelling in English was predicted similarly by phonological and orthographic processing skills, whereas spelling in Persian was predicted by orthographic processing skills only. It is possible that the nature of the Persian orthography encourages children to adopt different strategies when reading and spelling words. Spelling Persian words might be particularly conducive to using an analytic strategy which, in turn, promotes the development of and reliance on orthographic skills.