The effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding were examined. Our results suggest that semantic and phonetic radicals are each available for access when a corresponding task emphasizes one or the other kind of radical. But in a more neutral lexical recognition task, the semantic radical is more informative. Semantic…

Whether the simple view of reading (SVR) as incorporated in the componential model of reading (CMR) is applicable to other orthographies than English was explored in this study. Spanish, with transparent orthography and Chinese, with opaque orthography were selected because of their diverse characteristics. The first part reports a study of…

In order to understand the process of reading, it is important to determine how strings of letters are perceived. This study tests the hypothesis that units of visual perception may include pairs of letters and perhaps even high-frequency, monosyllabic trigrams (three-letter sequences). Participants were asked to report the names of either single…

The Language Play Method (LPM), a teaching method developed to systematically instruct preschool children in the structure of Japanese and Hiragana letters, is described in this paper. LPM develops three fundamental abilities which contribute to oral skill and literacy in kindergartners: the ability to recognize letters, the ability to decode…