Reading in an Alphasyllabary: Implications for a Language Universal Theory of Learning to Read

Abstract We report the associations between phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge in readers of alphasyllabic Kannada. Less fluent 9- to 12-year-olds with lower orthographic knowledge were at floor on phoneme tasks, but more fluent readers, with greater orthographic knowledge, showed significant phonemic awareness. Orthographic knowledge, phoneme awareness, and RAN were independent predictors of reading rate and, together with syllable awareness, predicted individual differences in reading accuracy. Taken together, we suggest that increasing alphasyllabic literacy promotes a dual representation at the syllable and phoneme level and that the analytic processes involved in acquiring orthographic knowledge and mappings with phonology are a universal aspect of reading development across languages. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Department of Education in Chamarajanagara District and members of the District Quality Education Project at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for their support in the field; Roopa Kishen, Jayashree Vyasarajan, Mamta Gupta, and Kala B. from The Promise Foundation for data collection and data coding. Finally, we thank the schools where this study was conducted and the children who willingly participated in the study. This work was supported by a research grant to MJS from the British Academy, preparation of the article was supported by a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship to SN. Notes 1For researchers of alphabetic writing systems, the term orthographic knowledge usually refers to knowledge of the grapheme sequences that map to the phonology in the language. Although such knowledge includes knowledge of letters (individual symbol units), this is often treated as a separate component called letter knowledge. For extensive orthographies, such as the logographic and alphasyllabary writing systems, knowledge of symbol units is a significant aspect of orthographic knowledge. In these writing systems, the terms character knowledge (for the logographies) and akshara knowledge (for the Indian alphasyllabaries) are used to reflect knowledge of basic symbol units and their spatial markers. 2The diacritic is a symbol that can only occur along with another symbol (e.g., the accent in French). In Kannada, specific visuo-spatial rules govern the position of the diacritic and, when used, change the sound value of the base symbol. 3The schwa in consonants with inherent vowel has not been considered as a phoneme.