Synopses & Reviews
Cross-linguistic perspective on how children learn to read and write in different languages and scripts.
Review
"This book provides us with abundant evidence that across a wide range of countries and across the full gamut of reading systems, there is a very close relationship between how easy it is to learn to read and how well the writing system being acquired permits nonlexical print-to-sound translation. Why should this be so? The self-teaching hypothesis provides an appealing answer to this question; hence, the data reported in this book provide strong evidence that this hypothesis is correct." Contemporary Psychology, APA Review of Books
Synopsis
Brings a unique cross-linguistic perspective to our understanding of how children learn to read and write in different languages and scripts which vary from each other in important ways. It includes chapters on the speed with which children learn to read and spell and the strategies they adopt when learning.
Table of Contents
List of contributors; 1. Introduction: a cross-linguistic perspective on learning to read and write Margaret Harris and Giyoo Hatano; 2. The acquisition of Italian orthography Giuseppe Cossu; 3. Learning to read German: normal and impaired acquisition Heinz Wimmer, Karin Landerl and Uta Frith; 4. Learning to read and spell in Greek: the importance of letter knowledge and morphological awareness Margaret Harris and Vicky Giannouli; 5. Phonological awareness, syntactic awareness and learning to read and spell in Brazilian Portuguese Lucia Lins Browne Rego; 6. Learning to read and write in Hebrew David Share and Iris Levin; 7. Different morphemes, same spelling problems: cross-linguistic developmental studies Peter Bryant, Terezhina Nunes and Athanasios Aidinis; 8. The relationship between phonological awareness and orthographic representation in different orthographies Usha Goswami; 9. Learning to read in Scandinavia Ingvar Lundberg; 10. Learning to read Chinese J. Richard Hanley, Ovid Tzeng and H.-S. Huang; 11. Reading skill development in bilingual Singaporean children Susan Rickard Liow; 12. Learning to read and write in Japanese Kiyomi Akita and Giyoo Hatano; Index.