Learning to Read and Write: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective: 2 (Cambridge Studies in Cognitive and Perceptual Development, Series Number 2) - Softcover

Harris, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521027187 ISBN 13: 9780521027182

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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

Book Description

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521027187
• ISBN 13: 9780521027182
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264