The journey to literacy is a fascinating one, and the way we learn to read can depend a lot on the language we're learning. When a child learns to read in an alphabetic language like English, they often rely on phonological awareness—the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in words. But what happens when the language isn’t alphabetic?
A look at Chinese, for instance, shows us a different path. In Chinese, each character represents both a sound and a meaning, which makes morphological awareness—the understanding of how words are built from smaller parts that have meaning—incredibly important. Research shows that for children learning Chinese, knowing how to break down characters into their morphemes can be a strong indicator of their reading ability.
It's not just about meaning, though. Orthographic awareness—the ability to understand how a character is visually put together—is also a key factor in learning to read Chinese. Children who can recognize the internal structure of characters are better at identifying and guessing new words.
Interestingly, for those learning both English and Chinese, there’s evidence that some skills, particularly those related to phonology and morphology, can transfer between the two languages. This suggests that the brain is very flexible, and the skills we build in one language can often help us in another.
Understanding these different processes helps us appreciate the complexity of language and the incredible ways children’s minds adapt to different writing systems. For parents and educators, this knowledge reinforces the importance of a comprehensive approach to early literacy, one that nurtures all the building blocks of language, whether they are sounds, meanings, or visual patterns.
Picture: Learning to read Chinese (Gemini)
