Transparent Orthography Research Articles

Oral language comprehension of young adults with low-level reading comprehension.

Significant difficulties in reading comprehension, despite attendance of compulsory schooling, are a worldwide phenomenon. While previous research on adults with low literacy skills focused primarily on their reading ability, less is known about their oral language skills. In this Brief Research Report, we present an investigation of the listening comprehension skills of a selected group of German-speaking young adults, whose reading comprehension is at a primary school level (n = 32, ages 16 to 19 years). In addition, the relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension, beyond word reading skills, was tested. Standardized tests of reading and listening comprehension in the German language were administered. The average performance of the group in the listening comprehension tasks was below the level expected by age and educational level. In addition, when entered into a stepwise regression equation, listening comprehension, but not word reading, explained a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension. This pattern of relationship differs from previous findings in studies of adults struggling to read the opaque English orthography. Whether orthographic transparency explains this discrepancy should be further tested in cross-orthography studies with larger samples of adults with low literacy skills.

Nonword reading by adults who stutter in a transparent orthography

PurposeUsing word- and nonword-reading passages in Kannada, which has a transparent orthography, we attempted to determine (a) whether orthographic differences between English and Kannada may explain the observed differences in stutter rates on nonwords, and (b) whether longer nonwords, like words, incur higher rates of stutters. MethodsStutters are defined as sound or syllable repetitions, sound prolongations, broken words or nonwords (a pause within a word or nonword), abnormal pauses, and intrusive vowel-like sounds. Twenty-six persons, who stutter, read the word and nonword passages. The nonwords were created by changing the first syllable of each word; otherwise words and nonwords were equivalent in length and syllable structure. Stutters were counted from audio-recordings and statistically analyzed. ResultsPWS stuttered on words in varying amounts and in significantly larger amounts on nonwords. Stutter frequency increased roughly in proportion to the increase in the length of phonological words (previously known) and nonwords (reported for the first time here). ConclusionThe results cannot be attributed to the difficulty of pronouncing nonwords because Kannada orthography has a one-to-one relationship between the written and spoken forms of words. Speech production is a multi-stage process consisting of ideation, lemma selection, phonological word creation, and the articulatory planning and execution. Because nonwords lack meaning and clearly identifiable part of speech, it appears that stutters arise late in the speech production process at the phonological word formation and articulatory planning stages. Meaning, lexicality, and morphosyntax may not contribute significantly to the occurrence of stutters.

Similarities and differences in the neural correlates of letter and speech sound integration in blind and sighted readers

Learning letter and speech sound (LS) associations is a major step in reading acquisition common for all alphabetic scripts, including Braille used by blind readers. The left superior temporal cortex (STC) plays an important role in audiovisual LS integration in sighted people, but it is still unknown what neural mechanisms are responsible for audiotactile LS integration in blind individuals. Here, we investigated the similarities and differences between LS integration in blind Braille (N = 42, age range: 9–60 y.o.) and sighted print (N = 47, age range: 9–60 y.o.) readers who acquired reading using different sensory modalities. In both groups, the STC responded to both isolated letters and isolated speech sounds, showed enhanced activation when they were presented together, and distinguished between congruent and incongruent letter and speech sound pairs. However, the direction of the congruency effect was different between the groups. Sighted subjects showed higher activity for incongruent LS pairs in the bilateral STC, similarly to previously studied typical readers of transparent orthographies. In the blind, congruent pairs resulted in an increased response in the right STC. These differences may be related to more sequential processing of Braille as compared to print reading. At the same time, behavioral efficiency in LS discrimination decisions and the congruency effect were found to be related to age and reading skill only in sighted participants, suggesting potential differences in the developmental trajectories of LS integration between blind and sighted readers.

Reading comprehension processes

Reading comprehension is a complex, multifaceted process in which a number of components are appropriately and often simultaneously activated. The importance of different background subprocesses, its complex nature, as well as the interconnection of various components has been demonstrated by various ‘models of reading and reading comprehension’. Based on these models, assessment methods and materials for reading comprehension are developed. However, the models and assessment materials developed so far are mostly derived from research on languages with non-transparent orthography (e.g., English). Therefore, the question arises regarding the extent to which they can or should be applied in languages with shallow, transparent orthography (e.g., Croatian) that have clear and consistent relationships between letters and sounds, as opposed to languages with deep orthography. The main aim of this study was to present a brief review of prominent reading comprehension models and their interconnections through specific levels of language processing (single word, sentence, discourse), as well as to discuss the methodological aspects of assessing reading comprehension processes arising from the presented theoretical models. Motivated by the fact that there is a lack of studies on models and assessment materials in languages with transparent orthography, the application of existing models and assessment methods will be discussed in the context of transparent orthography languages. This study provides comprehensive insights, based on theory, on the key elements to consider when developing an assessment method/tool for reading comprehension, both for research or diagnostic purposes

Contribution of orthographic knowledge to reading and spelling in Bosnian highly transparent orthography.

The link between orthographic processing skills and reading and spelling abilities has been demonstrated in different studies and languages. However, previous research has not fully clarified this relationship. We examined the relationship between orthographic knowledge and reading and spelling performance in children from the second to the fifth grade of elementary school. We included measures of orthographic knowledge in two scripts (Latin and Cyrillic) for the same language, at both the lexical and sublexical levels. Word-specific orthographic knowledge was assessed by presenting children with pairs of words in which one word followed the orthographic rules of the Bosnian language, while the other was spelled incorrectly. General orthographic knowledge was assessed with an orthographic word-likeness task, where children had to choose the correct pseudoword, which followed legal orthographic patterns, while the incorrect ones did not. Reading and spelling, phonological awareness, and working memory were also included in the research. In Latin, no relationship was found between reading and spelling and orthographic knowledge, independent of the measure of orthographic processing. In Cyrillic, spelling performance predicts progress in general orthographic knowledge. The results of the study suggest that orthographic knowledge does not contribute to reading and spelling between Grades 2 and 3. General orthographic knowledge was an independent predictor of spelling in Grades 4 and 5 for Cyrillic, the second script. The findings suggest that the development of orthographic knowledge should be considered in the context of the specific language, script, and orthography.

Simple View of Reading Across the Transition from Kindergarten to Grade 1 in a Transparent Orthography

ABSTRACT Purpose This longitudinal study investigated the simple view of reading (SVR) model and its cognitive basis in a transparent orthography of the Lithuanian across the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1. Method The language and early literacy skills of 229 children (Mage = 6.79, SD = .47) were tested at the end of kindergarten (vocabulary, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and RAN); listening comprehension and word reading fluency were tested at the start of Grade 1; and reading comprehension was measured at the end of Grade 1. Results Together with parental education, word reading fluency and listening comprehension predicted reading comprehension (R2 = 43.2%). The second model, which also included language and early literacy skills, showed that vocabulary and phonological awareness indirectly predicted reading comprehension via listening comprehension, while phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) indirectly predicted reading comprehension via word reading fluency (R2 = 43.6%). However, after allowing the direct paths from language and early literacy skills in kindergarten to reading comprehension, listening comprehension and word reading fluency were no longer significant predictors of reading comprehension, whereas vocabulary and letter knowledge were (R2 = 58.9%). Conclusion The results provided support for the SVR model in transparent Lithuanian orthography in that linguistic and decoding components are important for early reading comprehension. However, the results also suggested that, in the Lithuanian context, kindergarten vocabulary and letter knowledge are stronger measures in predicting reading comprehension than listening comprehension and word reading fluency in Grade 1.

Rapid Coding of Syllable Structure by Dysfluent Developing Readers

ABSTRACT Purpose The present study investigated whether the number of syllables affects developing readers’ word recognition when controlling for word length and word frequency and, if so, whether the effect is dependent on reading fluency. The target language was Finnish, a language with a transparent orthography and a simple syllable structure. Method Eye movements of 142 third and fourth graders were recorded during silent reading of two stories. Reading fluency was assessed separately. For analyses, a data subset containing words of a certain length (6,7,9 letters) and varying syllable number (2,3,4 syllables) was extracted from the data set. Using linear mixed-effects modeling, the effect of the syllable number on various eye-tracking measures across different levels of reading fluency was studied. Results Results revealed a statistically significant, impeding number of syllables effect in first fixation duration but non-significant effects in the later reading measures. Furthermore, fluent and dysfluent readers did not differ regarding the number of syllables effect. Conclusion These findings suggest that in Finnish developing readers, syllabic parsing is a highly rapid and automatized process, which predominantly takes place during the early holistic orthographic processing of a word, and that qualitatively similar orthographic processing occurs in fluent and dysfluent beginning readers.

Characterization of reading errors in languages with different orthographic regularity: an Italian–English comparison

The study examined whether a classification of errors based on Hendriks and Kolk’s (1997) proposal would effectively characterize the reading profile of children learning two orthographies varying for regularity, such as Italian and English. The study considered both an age-match and a grade-match comparison. Offline analysis of error production was carried out for two lists of stimuli: List 1 including regular words varying for frequency and matched non-words and List 2 including low-frequency words varying for regularity. In List 1, Italian-reading children made more multiple attempts characterized by a slow and progressive approach to the target (sounding-out behavior) than English-reading children, while the latter made relatively more word substitutions and non-word lexicalizations. As for List 2, Italian-reading children made relatively more multiple attempts and progressive approaches to the target compared to the English-reading children (with more sounding-out behaviors and syllabications), while the opposite occurred for phonological-visual errors, word substitutions, morphological, and semantic errors. Both groups showed a high proportion of phonological-visual and regularization errors (stress assignment in the case of Italian-reading children). Overall, the use of an error coding system specifically tuned to the characteristics of the orthographies investigated allowed a more comprehensive identification of reading difficulties which allowed the different strategies used by children of different languages to emerge more clearly (more reliance on sub-lexical routines in Italian readers and on lexical routines in English readers). These results call for more attention to error patterns in the identification of reading difficulties in children of different languages including those learning a transparent orthography where error analyses have largely been ignored.

The Role of Early Literacy Skills in Beginning to Read in Turkish: Longitudinal Findings from First Graders

The aim of this longitudinal study is to investigate the effects of early literacy skills on beginning to read in a transparent orthography, viz. Turkish. In line with this aim, a total of eighty-four participants were followed from preschool to the end of the first grade and the extent to which participants' early literacy skills in the preschool period predict their future reading performances was examined. All the data gathered in the study were collected individually at one-year intervals. The participants’ early literacy skills were tested by the "Test of Early Literacy (TEL)", reading comprehension skills was obtained with a text containing 162 words and 10 multiple choice questions, reading fluency performances were calculated with the formula of correct number of words per minute. Data were computed through correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis. Results suggest that regarding phonological awareness, early literacy sub-skills, especially those contributing to or serving oral comprehension had positive effects on reading fluency and reading comprehension at the end of the first grade. Valuable conclusions have been drawn from this finding about the role of phonological awareness, and its contribution to reading in an agglutinative orthography such as Turkish. Obtained results are discussed in relation to the literature.

Pathways from morphological awareness to reading fluency: the mediating role of phonological awareness and vocabulary

The goal of this study was to examine the relation of morphological skills with reading fluency in 2nd grade Greek-speaking children and if phonological awareness and vocabulary mediate their relation. The sample consisted of 105 2nd grade Greek-speaking students (46 males; Mage = 7.83 years, SD = 3.31). Morphological awareness was assessed with four tasks, examining inflectional and derivational morphology both at an epilinguistic and metalinguistic level. Reading fluency was assessed with oral and silent measures. Results of path analyses indicated that inflectional and derivational morphology contributed to reading fluency through multiple pathways, controlling for the effect of Rapid Automatized Naming. Phonological awareness fully mediated the relation of inflectional and derivational morphology with text reading fluency. Vocabulary partially mediated the relation of inflectional and derivational morphology with silent reading fluency. Furthermore, derivational morphology directly affected silent reading fluency. Overall, the relation of morphological awareness with reading fluency appeared to be dynamic and varied depending on the morphological awareness skill and measure of reading fluency. Regarding the mediating role of phonological awareness and vocabulary, the results showed that children in lower elementary grades in a transparent orthography with a rich morphological system used morphological skills as activators to existing phonological and semantic skills in supporting reading fluency processes.

Effects of orthographic transparency on rhyme judgement.

This study investigated the influence of multiliteracy in opaque orthographies on phonological awareness. Using a visual rhyme judgement task in English, we assessed phonological processing in three multilingual and multiliterate populations who were distinguished by the transparency of the orthographies they can read in (N = 135; ages 18-40). The first group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English and a transparent Latin orthography like Malay; the second group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English and transparent orthographies like Malay and Arabic; and the third group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English, transparent orthographies, and Mandarin Chinese, an opaque orthography. Results showed that all groups had poorer performance in the two opaque conditions: rhyming pairs with different orthographic endings and non-rhyming pairs with similar orthographic endings, with the latter posing the greatest difficulty. Subjects whose languages consisted of half or more opaque orthographies performed significantly better than subjects who knew more transparent orthographies than opaque orthographies. The findings are consistent with past studies that used the visual rhyme judgement paradigm and suggest that literacy experience acquired over time relating to orthographic transparency may influence performance on phonological awareness tasks.

The Underlying Components of Growth in Decoding and Reading Comprehension: Findings from a 5-Year Longitudinal Study of German-Speaking Children

ABSTRACT Purpose The transition to school and the first years of elementary school education are very sensitive phases for reading development. Reading researchers have established key precursors and developmental steps in these phases. However, how these components interact and affect growth is not well understood yet. The current study from Germany replicates established findings and explores how curvilinear effects can add information to our understanding of reading development. Method 525 German-speaking children were followed during a 5-year period from kindergarten to fourth Grade. Phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge (LK), rapid naming (RAN) and language skills (LS) were assessed in kindergarten, decoding and reading comprehension in elementary school. Analysis was based on latent growth models with curvilinear (quadratic) effects. Results The results indicate that PA and LK are of importance for early reading, RAN was additionally revealed to be of importance for further growth in decoding. Language skills and decoding, together with their interaction, explain variation in reading comprehension skills. A curvilinear effect was found for decoding on reading comprehension growth only. Conclusion Our study shows which precursors predict growth in reading development in a transparent orthography and expands our understanding of how language and decoding affect the development of reading comprehension.

Just a mark: Diacritic function does not play a role in the early stages of visual word recognition.

A very common feature in most writing systems is the presence of diacritics: distinguishing marks that are added for various linguistic reasons. Most models of reading, however, have not yet captured the nature of these marks. Recent priming experiments in several languages have attempted to resolve how diacritical letters are represented in the visual word recognition system. Since the function and appearance of diacritics can change from one language to the other, it is hard to interpret the accumulated evidence. With this in mind, we conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments in Hungarian, a transparent orthography with a wide use of diacritic vowels that allows for clear-cut manipulations. In the two experiments, we manipulated the presence or absence of the same diacritic (i.e., the acute accent) on two specific sets of letters that behave differently. In Experiment 1, the manipulation changed only the length of vowels, whereas in Experiment 2, it also changed the quality (e.g., a↝/ɒ/ vs. á↝/aː/). In both experiments, we found that primes with an omitted diacritic work just as good as the identity primes (nema→NÉMA = néma→NÉMA [mute]), whereas the addition of a diacritic comes with a cost (mése→MESE > mese→MESE [tale]). This asymmetry favors a purely perceptual account of the very early stages of word recognition, making it blind to the function of diacritics. We suggest that the linguistic functions of diacritics originate at later processing stages.

Cognitive predictors of oral reading miscues in the text reading process in a transparent orthography: Working memory and visual retention

Cognitive predictors of oral reading miscues in the text reading process in a transparent orthography: Working memory and visual retention

SPELLING ERRORS OF DYSLEXIC CHILDREN IN TRANSPARENT ORTHOGRAPHY: SPECIFIC DEFICIT OR DEVELOPMENTAL DEALY?

The aim of this paper was to analyze the spelling errors of children with dyslexia, in order to determine whether they have a specific pattern of spelling errors or are simply late in acquiring spelling skills. The sample included 30 children with dyslexiaand 30 spelling-level-matched younger children. The research was conducted in the area of Sarajevo Canton and Tuzla Canton in the period from March to May 2022. The results showed that children with dyslexia make similar patterns of errors as spelling-level-matched group. The obtained results show that children with dyslexia in transparent orthography do not have a specific deficit in spelling, but rather delay in acquiring spelling skills. Key words:dyslexia, transparent orthography, spelling errors, specific deficit, delay.

Spelling acquisition in a consistent orthography: The facilitatory effect of syllable frequency in novice spellers.

This study investigates the effects of two sublexical variables, syllable frequency, and word length, in the spelling acquisition of novice spellers dealing with a transparent orthography, such as Italian. Two groups of 1 st-grade Italian children were tested respectively after 4 and 8 months of schooling, with a spelling-to-dictation task of single words created ad hoc by manipulating syllable frequency orthogonally (high vs low frequency of the first syllable) and length (short vs long words). The results show that after only four months of schooling, children could offset their difficulty in writing long words by taking advantage of the high frequency of the initial syllable. However, the regularity of Italian spelling makes it easy to capture fine-sized phoneme-to-grapheme units, rendering the syllable effect no longer detectable in more schooled children.

English versus Zambian Languages: Exploring some Similarities and Differences with their Implication on the Teaching of Literacy and Language in Primary Schools

This desk study aimed at comparing English and selected Zambian Languages with a view of identifying some similarities and differences. Data was collected through author introspection and document analysis of existing literature. Publications in English and some Zambian Languages were collected from international databases such JSTOR, Cambridge Journals Online, and Palgrave Macmillan Journals. Searches for literature was extended to Google Scholar, Institutional Repository and visited the University of Zambia library in person. The documents collected were subjected to content analysis where key words, concepts and themes were picked and compared. Findings of the study revealed that English Language has an opaque orthography as there is no grapheme-phoneme correspondence while Zambian Languages have a transparent orthography where each grapheme correspond to individual sounds and that the number of graphemes is almost equal to phonemes. Literacy and language instruction would be much easier for learners in a transparent orthography than opaque. English has certain parts of speech such as articles (determiners) which are not there in Zambian Languages. Unlike English, vowel length is distinctive in all Zambian language. English and Zambian languages use alphabetic writing system with about 93% shared symbols or graphemes. These similarities and variations imply that pedagogically, if learners learn letter knowledge and decoding in a Zambian language, they will transfer such knowledge to English or any other alphabetic language and vice versa. Conversely, in areas where there are differences, literacy and language learners will face difficulties. The study recommended that teachers in early grade classes should understand the variation of English and selected Zambian languages well in their regions to guide learners in schools.

Spelling and writing skills in minority-language bilingual children exposed to a transparent orthography: multilevel profiles and concurrent predictors

ABSTRACT Many studies have explored how Language-Minority Bilingual Children (LMBC) read and comprehend, while the way they learn to spell and write has received less attention. This study aimed to assess a comprehensive profile of spelling and writing skills in LMBC, comparing performances of 4th and 5th grade bilingual (n = 74) and monolingual (n = 131) children in word and nonword reading and multilevel spelling and writing tasks (word, nonword and passage dictation, and written narrative production). Furthermore, we explored the role of linguistic and cognitive predictors (nonverbal Intellectual Quotient, verbal knowledge, morphosyntactic comprehension, nonword repetition) in spelling and writing outcomes. Our findings showed that, overall, LMBC did not reach a monolingual-like proficiency in spelling by the end of primary school, while they were similar to monolinguals in reading tasks and were able to produce written narratives with adequate macrostructure, syntactic complexity, and lexical variety. Moreover, morphosyntactic comprehension predicted spelling in both groups. Nonverbal intelligence and verbal knowledge predicted spelling skills only for the bilingual group. With regards to writing skills, morphosyntactic comprehension emerged as a predictor exclusively in the bilingual group. These results are discussed with reference to educational and clinical implications.

Preschool morphological awareness contributes to word reading at the very earliest stages of learning to read in a transparent orthography.

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether morphological awareness measured before children are taught to read (Kindergarten in Israel) predicts reading accuracy and fluency in the middle of first grade, at the very beginning of the process of learning to read pointed Hebrew – a highly transparent orthography, and whether this contribution remains after controlling for phonemic awareness. In a longitudinal design, 680 Hebrew-speaking children were administered morphological and phonemic awareness measures at the end of the preschool year (before they were taught to read) then followed up into first grade when reading was tested in mid-year. The results indicated that even at this early point in learning to read a transparent orthography, preschool morphological awareness contributes significantly to both reading accuracy and reading fluency, even after partialling out age, non-verbal general ability, and phonemic awareness. The current results extend the Functional Opacity argument (Share, 2008) which proposes that at the initial stages of reading acquisition, when children still have incomplete mastery of some aspects of the spelling-sound system, non-phonological sources of information about word identity such as morphology can assist in the decoding process. The practical implications of these results with regard to early reading instruction are discussed.

Phonological Awareness, Rapid Naming, and Nonword Repetition Abilities in Children with Dyslexia in Grade 1 to 6

Objectives: This study examined phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and nonword repetition abilities in children with dyslexia and typically developing children in grade 1 to 6. To examine the phonological processing abilities according to reading developmental stage, participants were divided into two groups: grade 1-2 and grade 3-6. Methods: A total of 78 children with dyslexia and typically developing children in grade 1-2 and 3-6 participated. All participants had no problems in nonverbal cognition and receptive vocabulary. Children with dyslexia had to score a standard score of 85 or less, and among the typically developing children those with a standard score of 90 or higher on the word decoding test of the standardized reading test were selected. Phonological processing abilities were tested using the phonological awareness, rapid naming, and nonword repetition tasks. Results: Children with dyslexia showed lower performance in phonological awareness, RAN, and nonword repetition tasks compared to typically developing children. In addition, it was found that all phonological processing abilities improved as the grade increased. There was an interaction effect on only nonword repetition, with no difference between children with dyslexia and typically developing children in grade 3-6. Conclusion: Even in Hangul, a transparent orthography, children with dyslexia had problems in all three phonological processing abilities. The effect size was the largest on the RAN between the two reading groups, so children with dyslexia were likely to have most difficulty on RAN. Finally, vocabulary ability in children with dyslexia would influence nonword repetition abilities.