Science of Reading

Fig 1. Strategies for Interactive Reading

Children enjoy spending time with their parents while actively listening to their parents reading storybooks or telling interesting stories to them. Is there more to interactive reading between parents and children than just enjoyment? In this post, we will discuss the importance of interactive reading!

Interactive reading is a form of positive experience that can enhance children’s language learning and reading abilities. During interactive reading, both readers (e.g., the parent and the child) are encouraged to ask questions and talk about the book. This allows children to become active participants in the reading activity and helps adults to check children’s understanding of the book content (WebJunction, Online Computer Library Center, 2018).

One important aspect of interactive reading is the opportunity for children to learn the articulation of words (Horowitz-Kraus & Hutton, 2015; Werker & Tees, 1984). Exposing a child to verbally read and listen to sounds of the word is equally as important as letting them understand the meaning of the word. Through interactive reading, a child can learn the sounds of words accurately. In addition, other components of reading such as semantics (i.e., meanings of words) and syntax (i.e., grammar) are also improved through interactive reading.

Research suggests that children’s reading and language development can significantly improve with interactive reading (Saracho and Spodek, 2010). Additionally, children may become more interested in reading and being read to. Interactive reading can also become a shared family activity that could help to strengthen the parent-child emotional bonds. There are also potential benefits (Shah-Wundenberg et al., 2013) of parents simply reading together with their children for 10 to 15 minutes daily or several times a week – a tip for busy parents!

In conclusion, interactive reading between parents and children is a helpful tool that can help children improve their language and reading abilities (Horowitz-Kraus & Hutton, 2015). It is okay to start out small (e.g., 10 minutes before dinner or before bed) with a simple book (e.g., have your child pick out their favourite book from school or a library), and slowly build up towards making interactive reading a daily activity. Check out this guide by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) on interactive reading for young children!

References

Horowitz-Kraus, T., & Hutton, J. S. (2015). From emergent literacy to reading: how learning to read changes a child’s brain. Acta Paediatrica, 104(7), 648–656. https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.13018https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.13018

Saracho, O. N., & Spodek, B. (2010). Parents and children engaging in storybook reading. Early child development and care, 180(10), 1379-1389.

Shah-Wundenberg, M et al., (2013). Parents helping their children learn to read: The effectiveness of paired reading and hearing reading in a developing country context. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(4), 471-500. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798412438067

WebJunction, Online Computer Library Center. (2018). Interactive Reading. https://www.webjunction.org/content/dam/WebJunction/Documents/webJunction/supercharged-storytimes/module1/interactive-reading-handout.pdf

Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7(1), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0163-6383(84)80022-3https://doi.org/10.1016/s0163-6383(84)80022-3

Figure 1 – obtained from https://thecolorfulapple.com/2020/04/interactive-read-aloud-strategies/

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Drafted by: Keval

Edited by: Michelle, Phoebe

Reviewed by: Annabel, Joyce, Marilyn, Tiffany

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Children read or “decode” English words in ways that are distinct from those used to break down Chinese characters. Although some children might be able to decode either English or Chinese words, such skills do not carry over to the other language. Instead, different decoding strategies have to be learned and retained in order to gain understanding in that particular language. Hence, it is common for children to be better in one language compared to another.  

Figure 1. Example of English decoding using letter-sound correspondences 

Research has shown that three of the most common strategies used by children to remember and decode Chinese characters emphasised visual processing instead of oral processing (Pine et al., 2003). Furthermore, younger children, below the age of 9, have a higher tendency to separate Chinese characters into its smaller and more basic components. 

Figure 2. Levels of Chinese word complexity; Word, Character, Radical 

Reading in Chinese involves both single-character reading and multi-character word reading. In general, most Chinese words are compound words, comprising two or more characters (Wang & McBride, 2016). For instance, in Figure 2, the word 冰水 (ice water) consists of two characters–冰 (ice) and 水 (water). Additionally, more than 80% of currently used Chinese characters are compound characters which have two radicals indicating the pronunciation and meaning respectively (Kang & Li, 1993). For example, the character “冰” (ice) comprises two parts–the phonetic component 水 (water) and the semantic component 冫(cold). The phonetic component is pronounced shuǐ, signifying the sound of the character while the semantic component represents the meaning of the character, which is “ice”. It is important for children to understand how the positions and functions of different components vary in Chinese words. (Li et al., 2012; Tong et al., 2009) It has also been found that children begin to be aware of how Chinese words are written from the age of six (Anderson et al., 2013).  

Thus, it is important for parents to encourage their children to read aloud in Chinese. Additionally, it may be helpful for parents to cultivate a habit of paying attention to the different components of Chinese characters when reading in Chinese with their children to aid learning of new words in the future. 

References: 

Anderson, R. C., Ku, Y. M., Li, W., Chen, X., Wu, X., & Shu, H. (2013). Learning to see the patterns in Chinese characters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(1), 41-56. 

Li, Y., & Kang, J. (1993). Information analysis of usage of characters in modern Chinese. Shanghai: Shanghai Education Publisher, 84-98. 

Li, T., McBride-Chang, C., Wong, A., & Shu, H. (2012). Longitudinal predictors of spelling and reading comprehension in Chinese as an L1 and English as an L2 in Hong Kong Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 286. 

Limetree Literacy. (2022). Letter Sound Association.https://limetree-literacy-education.teachable.com/courses/397574/lectures/4399504 

Pine, N., Ping’an, H., & Ren Song, H. (2003). Decoding strategies used by Chinese primary school children. Journal of Literacy Research, 35(2), 777-812. 

Tong, X., McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., & Wong, A. M. (2009). Morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and spelling errors: Keys to understanding early Chinese literacy acquisition. Scientific Studies of Reading, 13(5), 426-452. 

Wang, Y., & McBride, C. (2016). Character reading and word reading in Chinese: Unique correlates for Chinese kindergarteners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(2), 371-386. 

Drafted by: Kah Xuan

Edited by: Phoebe, Michelle

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Reading is a multisensory task that requires the integration of visual and audio stimuli, namely printed letters and speech sounds, respectively. According to the ‘Dual-Route Model of Reading’, reading can be achieved by either the lexical route or the sublexical route (Coltheart et al., 1993). The lexical route allows us to map a word’s orthographic structure (for instance a string of letters) onto its pronunciation directly, while the sublexical route allows us to pronounce words by breaking down the word’s structure into smaller sound units and putting them together (Joubert et al., 2004).

Using brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have discovered that several areas in the left hemisphere of the brain make up the reading network (Raschle et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2018). These areas may be associated with different functions to help us read. The first area that helps us recognize letters and words is in the fusiform gyrus, also known as the visual word form area. The temporo-parietal area allows us to play with the sounds of words, and the middle temporal gyrus helps us understand the meanings of words. The inferior frontal gyrus, also known as Broca’s area, directs us to generate the sounds and meanings of words. Hence, a widespread network of brain areas is active as we read.

Through functional neuroimaging, research has also shown that the Dual-Route Model of Reading may be mapped to distinct brain areas to help us identify and read words (Roux et al., 2012). Reading via the sublexical “indirect” pathway engages the dorsal (top) areas of the brain, whereas reading via the lexical “direct” pathway involves the ventral (bottom) part of the brain (Jobard et al., 2003).

Figure 1. Dorsal and Ventral areas of the brain

In addition, research has shown that our brain uses different pathways when reading English words versus Chinese words. English is an alphabetic language, in which the sublexical pathway is used when reading regular words (e.g., brain, melt), while the lexical pathway helps us to read irregular words (e.g., pint, glove) (Wu & O’Brien, in press). In contrast, reading Chinese characters relies more on the lexical pathway as the pronunciation of a character is learnt through rote memorisation (Wu & O’Brien, in press). Overall, when reading English words, the pathway we use depends on the type of words we are reading, whereas when reading Chinese characters, we are mainly using the lexical pathway.

References

Coltheart, M., Curtis, B., Atkins, P., & Haller, M. (1993). Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches. Psychological review, 100(4), 589-608. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.4.589   

Jobard, G., Crivello, F., & Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2003). Evaluation of the dual route theory of reading: a metanalysis of 35 neuroimaging studies. Neuroimage, 20(2), 693-712. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00343-4

Joubert, S., Beauregard, M., Walter, N., Bourgouin, P., Beaudoin, G., Leroux, J., Karama, S., & Lecours, A. R. (2004). Neural correlates of lexical and sublexical processes in reading. Brain and language, 89(1), 9-20. https://doi.org.remotexs.ntu.edu.sg/10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00403-6

Smith, G. J., Booth, J. R., & McNorgan, C. (2018). Longitudinal Task-Related Functional Connectivity Changes Predict Reading Development. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1754. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01754

Raschle, N. M. R., Borbás, R. B., King, C. K., & Gaab, N. G. (2020). The Magical Art of Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Study the Reading Brain. Frontiers for Young Minds. https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00072 

Roux, F., Durand, J., Jucla, M., Réhault, E., Reddy, M., & Démonet, J. (2012). Segregation of lexical and sub-lexical reading processes in the left perisylvian cortex. PLoS one, 7(11), e50665. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050665

Wu, C.-Y., & O’Brien, B. A. (In press). Brain Signatures of Reading within Different Types of Learners and across Written Languages: Evidence and Implications for Education. In D. W. L. Hung, A. Jamaludin, & A. A. Rahman (Eds.), Applying the Science of Learning to Education: An Insight into the Mechanisms that Shape Learning. Singapore: Springer Nature.

Figure 1 – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ventral-dorsal_streams.svg

Drafted by Claire & Kah Xuan

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Bilingualism refers to the ability to speak or understand two languages. Singapore is a multilingual society with English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil being the main languages used. A child can become bilingual in multiple ways. For example, a child learns two languages when the child’s parents and caregivers switch between two languages frequently during daily interactions, thereby becoming bilingual. Another way is when the language spoken at home differs from the language spoken in school, the child picks up both languages and become bilingual (Walsh, 2015). Children enrolled in the Singapore education system become bilingual through different ways and learn to use two languages fluently.

Previous research has shown that bilingual children utilise cognitive resources beyond those needed for basic language learning when they switch between two languages (Walsh, 2015). For example, bilingual children have been observed to perform better than their monolingual counterparts in tasks that require executive function, which involves skills such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, attention control and reasoning (Bialystok et al., 2012).

Everyone’s bilingual status is dynamic–it changes over time. To understand how bilingualism develops, we explore aspects of the language environment such as the main language spoken at home, to recognise trends in children’s development. We also look into how the brain supports the development of these different languages. By conducting more bilingual studies, we are able to consider more variables that play key roles in an individual’s developmental trajectory. Additionally, we can also learn how language development can be better supported.

References

Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain. Trends in cognitive sciences, 16(4), 240-250.

Walsh, B. W. (2015, October 1). Bilingualism as a Life Experience. Harvard Graduate School of Education. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/10/bilingualism-life-experience#:%7E:text=Bilingualism%20and%20executive%20function&text=Recent%20research%20has%20shown%20that,reasoning%2C%20and%20flexible%20problem%20solving

Drafted by: Kah Xuan

Edited by: Phoebe, Michelle, Joyce, Prof Annabel