Early identification of poor readers and preventive training in Chinese using Pinyin Graphogame: Results from a pilot study in mainland

Previous studies have showed that visual-verbal paired association learning is linked to reading skill both in typically developing and impaired readers. Children with dyslexia were significantly poorer in visual-verbal paired association learning not only in alphabetic scripts, such as English, German, Dutch, but also in Chinese. The current study aims to examine whether the support provided via Graphogame to the readers during the first step of reading, ie. when acquiring0 Pinyin learning. Pinyin is a consistent phonological coding system used in Mainland China to teach the pronunciations of new Chinese characters. Children usually spend the first eight weeks of primary school to learn it. Seventy-six 6 year-old first graders were assigned to 1 of 3 groups based on their pre-test results: (a) training first group (n=26) (b) waiting list group (n=25), and (c) control group (n=25). Only the training first group played Pinyin GraphoGame from the beginning of the intervention period. After two months, an intermediate assessment was administered after which the waiting list group started to play the game. All the participants were tested at the same time at pre-, intermediate- and post-test points. The results showed that the intervention helps children to learn faster Pinyin. We expect being able to inform the audience whether the rate of this initial learning predicts acquiring the next step Chinese children have to make to learn to read. Copyright © 2013 SSSR.