This book discusses multiple aspects of Chinese dual language immersion (DLI) programs, with a focus on the controversial Utah model. The first part of the book focuses on the parents, teachers, and school administrators. It looks at the perceptions of the three groups toward the Utah model, how they build a supportive DLI classroom with an…

Because a large number of Chinese characters are commonly used in both Japanese and Chinese, Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (JSL) find it more challenging to learn Japanese functional expressions than to learn other Japanese vocabulary. To address this challenge, we have developed "Jastudy," a…

The goal of research on how letter identity and order are perceived during reading is often characterized as one of "cracking the orthographic code." Here, we suggest that there is no orthographic code to crack: Words are perceived and represented as sequences of letters, just as in a dictionary. Indeed, words are perceived and represented in…

The authors describe how alphabet books teach so much more than just the ABCs. They provide excellent resources, allowing teachers to link and integrate the reciprocal processes of reading and writing. Encapsulated within the writing workshop framework, the authors use multigenre and multicultural alphabet books as anchor texts for a literacy…

The teaching of reading in different languages should be informed by an effective evidence base. Although most children will eventually become competent, indeed skilled, readers of their languages, the pre-reading (e.g. phonological awareness) and language skills that they bring to school may differ in systematic ways for different language…

Are words read visually (by means of a direct mapping from orthography to semantics) or phonologically (by mapping from orthography to phonology to semantics)? The authors addressed this long-standing debate by examining how a large-scale computational model based on connectionist principles would solve the problem and comparing the model's…

Argues that orthographic knowledge develops amidst cultural activity for which reading and writing are social and intellectual tools. Advocates school-based spelling instruction that promotes a deep and thorough understanding of orthography. Contrasts "insulated" and "imbedded" spelling programs. (RS)

The Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg and Patterson (1996) connectionist model of reading was evaluated at two points early in its training against reading data collected from British children on two occasions during their first year of literacy instruction. First, the network's non-word reading was poor relative to word reading when compared with the…

The article explores information processing models of spelling performance and argues that an adequate theory of spelling processes must include: (1) qualitative changes in performance as a function of maturation that underlie development of automaticity; (2) transactional development of spelling-related knowledge structures and efficient…