Chinese dyslexia

Dyslexia for the Chinese language was suspected to be much more complicated when compared to primarily phonological language such as English (Chen, 2002).  This was because Chinese was a pictorial or symbolic language, where the written form utilized logograms which acted as basic graphemes. This meant that meaning (morphemes), rather than sounds (phonemes) formed the basis of the Chinese characters (Zhou et al., 1999). Hence, to read Chinese characters, learners needed to have orthographic awareness. Orthographic awareness referred to how meanings were mapped to the visually intricate graphic forms of Chinese characters (Fang, 1997). This also meant that the pronunciation of Chinese characters had to be memorized using rote learning (Chow, McBride-Chang & Burgess, 2005). In addition, individuals needed to use their visuospatial processing to activate semantic information to comprehend the meanings of the Chinese characters that they were reading (Ho, Chan, & Lee, 2002). 

There was a difference between Chinese dyslexia and English dyslexia, according to Siok (2008). MRI studies done by Siok’s (2008) team showed that when comparing 16 English users with dyslexia (English language was based on alphabetic scripts) and 16 Chinese users with dyslexia (Chinese was based on logographic nature), it was found that there was deep connection between different parts of the brain, as different parts of the brain were linked when a person read two types of languages such as English and Chinese. When a person read aloud Chinese characters, it was found that there was more brain activity in the frontal part of the brain whereas when this person read letters in the English language, there was more usage in the posterior part of the brain (Siok, Niu, Jin, Perfetti, & Tan, 2008). 

 It was therefore not surprising that researchers found that Chinese children who had difficulties reading in Chinese had brain anomalies that were different from their Western counterparts who learned purely phonological languages such as English (Naeser & Chan, 1980).  These Chinese children who had difficulty in reading were discovered to have orthographic and phonological awareness issues, as well as visuospatial processing impairments.  

(Excerpts taken from my masters dissertation)

SO, I was often asked , Can we diagnose Chinese dyslexia?

Yes, if the assessment tool used is localised. Presently in Singapore, there are no standardized assessment tools that could be used to assess students with dyslexia in the Chinese language in Singapore.  Presently, there were several Chinese-based assessment tools used in China to assess for dyslexia in the Chinese language, such as “the Dyslexia checklist for Chinese children (DCCC)” (Wu, Song & Yao, 2006) and “the Chinese Character Learning Test (CCLT)” (Gai & Yang, 2006). But we cannot use the tools in Singapore as our students learn Chinese as a 2nd or even as 3rd language. Therefore it would be crucial to produce local assessment tools to assess and identify students who were presently having difficulty in learning Chinese. Without the standardized criteria for diagnosing and assessment, this posed difficulty in our impending research on intervention strategies to help students with dyslexia.