In this paper, we survey current evidence on cognitive precursors of reading in different orthographies by reviewing studies with a cross-linguistic research design. Graphic symbol knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were found to be associated with reading acquisition in all orthographies…

Memorization is essential when new knowledge is based on association with existing knowledge. It is key in acquiring logographic languages, such as Chinese and Japanese. Such languages present challenges to students possessed of alphabet-based mother tongues. To meet these challenges, we discuss a technology-enhanced learning method to address the…

When reading in a second language, a reader's first language may be involved. For word reading, the question is how and at what level: lexical, pre-lexical, or both. In three experiments, we employed an implicit reading task (color judgment) and an explicit reading task (word naming) to test whether a Chinese meaning equivalent character and its…

Humans have a limited capacity to identify concurrent, briefly presented targets. Recent experiments using concurrent rapid serial visual presentation of letters in horizontally displaced streams have documented a deficit specific to the stream in the right visual field. The cause of this deficit might be either prioritization of the left item…

This narrative review discusses quantitative indices measuring differences between alphabetic languages that are related to the process of word recognition. The specific orthography that a child is acquiring has been identified as a central element influencing reading acquisition and dyslexia. However, the development of reliable metrics to…

Although many young children become literate within an environment in which different writing systems exist, there is little research on what children know about different writing systems and how they understand and develop them when they are learning more than one simultaneously. This qualitative study discusses how Korean EFL (English as a…

Heritage language speakers struggle in European classrooms with insufficient material provided for second language (SL) learning and assessment. Considering the amount of instruments and pertinent studies in English SL, immigrant students are better prepared than their peers in Romance language settings. This study investigates how factors such as…

The relationship between first language (L1) typology, defined as the classification of languages according to their structural characteristics (e.g. phonological systems and writing systems), and the development of second (L2) and third (L3) language skills and literacy proficiency in multilingual children was investigated in this study. The…

In this study, we present the analyses stemming from a survey administered to 2149 foreign language learners at Michigan State University. We had three goals. First, we aimed to compile a profile of language learners' technological acumen, access to and ownership of technology, and the current uses of technology across a wide range of languages…

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…

The first part of this text for young students provides an introduction to the origins of language, the beginnings of writing, and the making of an alphabet. The second part, "Word Stories," presents the etymologies of over 100 common English words in simplified, nontechnical style. Special terms are explained in a prefatory section. A word and…

The Uniform Slavic Transliteration Alphabet (USTA) was designed primarily with the following objectives: to aid librarians (catalogers and bibliographers), information scientists, transliterators, and editors of bibliographic works of the many Slavic tongues; and to serve as original research for the further development of a machine-readable…

Two experiments are reported on the array-scanning characteristics of Malaysian subjects exposed to arrays of Roman and Arabic letters. Unique search patterns were found with both letters. Ways are discussed in which these patterns may be related to the underlying linguistic structure of words in Bahasa Malaysia, English, and Arabic. (13…

This survey of the world's written languages consists of a series of historical sketches of different languages, each including a table of signforms in their standard order and their variations, but focusing primarily on how the sounds of the language are represented in writing. A brief text in the language(s) the script is used for is also…

THIS TEXT IS DESIGNED AS A MANUAL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO PROVIDE GENERAL INFORMATION ON ALTAIC LINGUISTICS, AS WELL AS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. IN PART 1, THE AUTHOR CLASSIFIES THE ALTAIC LANGUAGES--MONGOLIAN, MANCHU-TUNGUS, CHUVASH-TURKIC, (WITH THE POSSIBLE INCLUSION OF KOREAN)--AND…