Hanley Richard, Masterson Jackie, Spencer Llinos, Evans Dylan
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 2004 Nov;57(8):1393-410. doi: 10.1080/02724980343000819.
Spencer and Hanley (2003) showed that Welsh-speaking children aged between 5 and 7 years who were learning to read Welsh (a transparent orthography) performed significantly better at reading both real words and nonwords than did English-speaking children living in Wales who were learning to read English (a deep orthography). In this study, the reading skills of these children were reexamined three years later, during their sixth year of formal reading instruction. The children learning to read English continued to perform poorly at reading low- and medium-frequency irregular words but no differences were observed in reading regular words or nonwords. These findings emphasize how long it takes to acquire a large sight vocabulary in English, but indicated that the reading skills of the majority of the English-speaking children had caught up with those of their Welsh-speaking counterparts. However, the poorest 25% of the English readers continued to perform much worse than the lowest performing 25% of Welsh readers on both words and nonwords. An underachieving tail of this kind was not observed in the reading performance of the Welsh-speaking group. Overall, these findings suggest that in the long term the detrimental effects of an opaque orthography are most damaging to the poorest readers.
斯宾塞和汉利（2003年）指出，5至7岁正在学习阅读威尔士语（一种透明正字法）的威尔士语儿童，在阅读真实单词和非单词方面的表现，明显优于生活在威尔士正在学习阅读英语（一种深度正字法）的英语儿童。在这项研究中，三年后，即在这些儿童接受正式阅读教学的第六年，对他们的阅读技能进行了重新测试。学习阅读英语的儿童在阅读低频和中频不规则单词方面仍然表现不佳，但在阅读规则单词或非单词方面未观察到差异。这些发现强调了在英语中掌握大量视觉词汇需要多长时间，但表明大多数说英语的儿童的阅读技能已经赶上了说威尔士语的同龄人。然而，最落后的25%的英语阅读者在单词和非单词方面的表现仍然比表现最差的25%的威尔士阅读者差得多。在说威尔士语的群体的阅读表现中没有观察到这种成绩不佳的尾部现象。总体而言，这些发现表明，从长远来看，不透明正字法的不利影响对最落后的阅读者危害最大。
