This study assessed the effects of four types of teaching instruction for Hangul learning in Korean kindergartners. Forty-five four-year-old children participated in a Hangul learning experiment where they were taught 6 new Korean Guljas (Korean written syllable) in each of four conditions--whole Gulja, alphabet letter, CV (consonant + vowel) body…

Using media texts from a Korean newspaper archive, this article describes the process through which the state took up the ideology of linguistic nationalism during the period of Japanese colonisation of Korea (1910-1945). This was particularly aimed at a modernisation project in order for the legacy of the Joseon dynasty, which had ruled Korea for…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

A great deal of disagreement exists as to whether the writing systems of the Brahmi family of scripts from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent and the Hangul script of Korea should be classified as alphabets or syllabaries. Both have in common a mixture of syllabic and alphabetic characteristics that has spawned vigorous disagreement among…

Examines societies in which varieties and degrees of literacy are possible or ordinary, such as Japan and Korea. Finds that these societies have separate but functionally interrelated writing systems, used for communicatively disparate purposes, differential mastery of which, consequently, has social and economic repercussions. Finds that…

In this paper, we argue that a complete understanding of language processing, in this case word-recognition processes, requires consideration both of multiple languages and of developmental processes. To illustrate these goals, we will summarize a 10-year research program exploring word-recognition processes in Korean adults and children. We…