Even though Specific Reading Disability (Dyslexia) has been clinically recognized as a developmental learning disorder for nearly a hundred years. only within the past two decades it has become the subject of major experimental investigation. Because. by definition. dyslexic children are of average or superior intelligence. it is often suspected that some arcane feature of the written language is responsible for the inordinate difficulty experienced by these children in learning to read. The occasional claim that developmental dyslexia is virtually nonexistent in some languages coupled with the fact that languages differ in their writing systems has further rendered orthography a subject of serious investigation. The present Volume represents a collection of preliminary reports of investigations that explored the relationship between orthography and reading disabilities in different languages. Even though not explicitly stated. these reports are concerned with the question whether or not some orthographies are easier to learn to read and write than others. One dimension on which orthographies differ from each other is the kind of relationship they bear to pronunciation. The orthographies examined in this book range from the ones that have a simple one-to one grapheme-phoneme relationship to those which have a more complex relationship."

Until about two decades ago, the study of writing systems and their relationship to literacy acquisition was sparse and generally modeled after studies of English language learners. This situation is now changing. As the worldwide demand for literacy continues to grow, researchers from different countries with different language backgrounds have begun examining the connection between their writing systems and literacy acquisition. This text, which derives from a NATO sponsored conference on orthography and literacy, brings together the research of seventy scholars from across the world--the largest assemblage of such experts to date. Their findings are grouped into three parts, as follows: Part I, Literacy Acquisition in Different Writing Systems, describes the relationship between orthography and literacy in twenty-five orthographic systems. This section serves as a handy reference source for understanding the orthographies of languages as diverse as Arabic, Chinese, English, Icelandic, Kannada, and Kishwahili. Part II, Literacy Acquisition From a Cross-Linguistic Perspective, makes direct comparisons of literacy acquisition in English and other orthographic systems. The overall conclusion that emerges from these eight chapters is that the depth of an orthographic system does influence literacy acquisition primarily by slowing down the acquisition of reading skills. Even so, studies show that dyslexic readers can be found across all orthographic systems whether shallow or deep, which shows that dyslexia also has internal cognitive and biological components. Part III, Literacy Acquisition: Instructional Perspectives, explores literacy acquisition from developmental and instructional perspectives and ends with a look into the future of literacy research. This Handbook is appropriate for scholars, researchers, and graduate students in such diverse fields as cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, literacy education, English as a second language, and communication disorders.

Even though Specific Reading Disability (Dyslexia) has been clinically recognized as a developmental learning disorder for nearly a hundred years. only within the past two decades it has become the subject of major experimental investigation. Because. by definition. dyslexic children are of average or superior intelligence. it is often suspected that some arcane feature of the written language is responsible for the inordinate difficulty experienced by these children in learning to read. The occasional claim that developmental dyslexia is virtually nonexistent in some languages coupled with the fact that languages differ in their writing systems has further rendered orthography a subject of serious investigation. The present Volume represents a collection of preliminary reports of investigations that explored the relationship between orthography and reading disabilities in different languages. Even though not explicitly stated. these reports are concerned with the question whether or not some orthographies are easier to learn to read and write than others. One dimension on which orthographies differ from each other is the kind of relationship they bear to pronunciation. The orthographies examined in this book range from the ones that have a simple one-to one grapheme-phoneme relationship to those which have a more complex relationship."