Learning to Read and Write: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective

by Edited by Margaret Harris , Giyoo Hatano

• ISBN13: 9780521027182
• ISBN10: 0521027187
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

For many years, the development of theories about the way children learn to read and write was dominated by studies of English-speaking populations. As we have learned more about the way that children learn to read and write other scripts - whether they have less regularity in their grapheme-phoneme correspondences or do not make use of alphabetic symbols at all - it has become clear that many of the difficulties that confront children learning to read and write English specifically are less evident, or even non-existent, in other populations. At the same time, some aspects of learning to read and write are very similar across scripts. The unique cross-linguistic perspective offered in this book, including chapters on Japanese, Greek and the Scandinavian languages as well as English, shows how the processes of learning to read and spell are affected by the characteristics of the writing system that children are learning to master.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix
1 Introduction: a cross-linguistic perspective on learning to read and write	1	(9)
MARGARET HARRIS AND GIYOO HATANO
2 The acquisition of Italian orthography	10	(24)
GIUSEPPE COSSU
3 Learning to read German: normal and impaired acquisition	34	(17)
HEINZ WIMMER, KARIN LANDERL AND UTA FRITH
4 Learning to read and spell in Greek: the importance of letter knowledge and morphological awareness	51	(20)
MARGARET HARRIS AND VICKY GIANNOULI
5 Phonological awareness, syntactic awareness and learning to read and spell in Brazilian Portuguese	71	(18)
LUCIA LINS BROWNE REGO
6 Learning to read and write in Hebrew	89	(23)
DAVID SHARE AND IRIS LEVIN
7 Different morphemes, same spelling problems: cross-linguistic developmental studies	112	(21)
PETER BRYANT, TEREZINHA NUNES AND ATHANASIOS AIDINIS
8 The relationship between phonological awareness and orthographic representation in different orthographies	133	(24)
USHA GOSWAMI
9 Learning to read in Scandinavia	157	(16)
INGVAR LUNDBERG
10 Learning to read Chinese	173	(23)
J. RICHARD HANLEY, OVID TZENG AND H.-S. HUANG
11 Reading skill development in bilingual Singaporean children	196	(18)
SUSAN RICKARD LIOW
12 Learning to read and write in Japanese	214	(21)
KIYOMI AKITA AND GIY00 HATANO
Index	235