Writing English in the East Asian Classroom

Abstract

This chapter investigates the problems typically encountered by East Asian learners in their attempts to gain English literacy, as well as how to assist learners in overcoming such difficulties. It begins with a discussion about the importance of reading to both general education and language acquisition, as well as the negative impact that deficiencies in word decoding skills can have on reading comprehension, and the potential issues involved with learning an L2 with a different orthography from one’s L1. The author reviews the theoretical models of word-level reading, and then proceeds to give a breakdown of word-level processing of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean script, highlighting the potential difficulties in transferring L1 skills to learning English literacy. Sentence, paragraph, and text-level issues are discussed along with possible remediation strategies. Finally, as in the preceding chapter, the author presents two contrasting lesson plans, analyzing each for effectiveness for L2 literacy acquisition in the East Asian context.