rvpalliende (07/27/82)
The following quote is in "The initial teaching alphabet (i/t/a)" by Albert J. Mazurkiewicz, in "The Disabled Reader", John Money, editor. Reproduced without permission. We might therefore, conclude, at this early point that if English were regularly spelled or more regularly spelled (not necessarily perfectly encoded) then learning to read and write would be essentially a simple process, that the mean of word recognition ability for a normal population might very well be at a fifth grade or fifth reader level by the end of the first grade. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following quote is in "The inner speech of reading and the mental and physical characteristics of speech" by Edmund B Huey, in "Readings in Reading", Delwyn G. Schubert, editor. Reproduced without permission. But although there is an occasional reader in whom the inner speech is not very noticeable, and although it is a foreshortened and incomplete speech in most of us, yet it is perfectly certain that the inner hearing or pronouncing, or both, of what is read, is a constituent part of the reading of by far the most people, as they ordinarily and actually read. [...] Quantz found lip-movement, and consequently inner speech, to be universal in the early reading of children. The lip-movement decreases with practice and usually, although not always, disappears in the rapid and more intelligent readers. He found that "lip-movement in silent reading is not an acquired habit, but a reflex action, the physical tendency to which is inherited". [...] My own observations indicate that the disappearance of the lip-movement is no indication of the abscence of inner speech in reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Therefore, we can conclude that: a) a sensible spelling would help children to read. (And adults to have good spelling). b) Phonetic spelling is not the cause ov "lip movement" or "inner speech" (because it occurs even in English) And if the Chinese are beginning to use Latin alphabet, it probably means that ideograms have more problems than advantages. Pablo Alliende, U of Waterloo.