中国心理语言学论坛

2013第二届中国心理语言学国际学术研讨会主旨发言4内容简介

主旨发言（4）：(How) is Chinese special? Unique features of the Chinese orthography and implications for early literacy development

Catherine McBride

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Given that most of the research to date on how children learn to read has been on alphabetic orthographies, it is important to consider how children learn to read Chinese and whether this process is in some ways different from how children learn to read alphabetic languages. In this talk, I will highlight four ways in which learning to read Chinese is fundamentally different from learning to read an alphabetic orthography with development. These are the unit of reading (word vs. character), the role of radicals, the importance and types of morphological skills for learning to read, and how visual skills interact with learning to read. These four aspects are important for understanding theoretical models of word reading and the extent to which such models hold up universally. These aspects are also practically important as educators consider best practices for teaching children to read in Chinese.