An exploration of the effectiveness of drawings in recognizing Chinese characters for primary one and two with and without dyslexia

Abstract

In Hong Kong, there is still lack of an effective strategy for less- skilled elementary pupils (especially in primary one and two) and Cantonese-speaking dyslexics in learning to recognize Chinese characters. In this study, a learning approach was designed to explore the effectiveness of learning Chinese characters from drawing between pre-post tests. The exploration of the effectiveness of children’s drawing in learning knowledge of the components of semantic-phonetic characters and recognition of the Chinese characters is conducted. Dyslexic participants and elementary pupils without dyslexia are studied. The results between pre-test and post-test help reveal that both elementary and dyslexic pupils can recognize more characters accurately after learning semantic-phonetic characters through drawing. With this new learning approach, children are allowed to understand the structure of semantic-phonetic characters, and to recognize characters without copying, indicating that drawing is effective, especially in enhancing pupils’ memories and understanding of semantic phonetic characters. Even more, a simplified screening method used in this study is suggested in identifying Cantonese-speaking children who may at risk in dyslexia in Hong Kong.