An analysis of reading errors in Chinese language

The purpose of this study is to explore different types of errors made by students with Chinese reading difficulties. Based on dual-route model of reading, readers may use either the lexical (words are recognized as wholes) or sub-lexical (words are recognized through grapheme-phoneme correspondence) procedure to read. Castles & Coltheart (1993) have provided evidence for the existence of these two mechanisms in English reading. They suggest deficits in one and/or the other mechanism lead to different patterns of reading disability. Surface dyslexia results from impairment of the lexical procedure with an intact phonological route to reading. Phonological dyslexia results from a highly selective deficit in the grapheme-phoneme transformation mechanism. It was found that the proportion of phonological dyslexia was higher than that of surface dyslexia in English language. In usual practice, reading errors are categorized into: semantic, phonological and visual. Siegel (1993) suggested that the reading disabled children made more semantic errors in English language. This is due to the fact that many of these children use the lexical route to read. In the case of Chinese reading, Ho & Elliott (2001) claimed that a relative higher proportion of surface dyslexia was found. The result of this study showed that more phonological errors were made by the Chinese reading disabled children.