Dyslexia and Pinyin

 

                                                                   QI HU NAN XIA

My so-called dyslexic students who attended vernacular school could read in Pinyin. There is no reason for them to be unable to read in Pinyin or Malay.

I researched why many intelligent kids could read in Pinyin and Malay and yet could not read in English. This resulted in my books Shut Down Kids which I wrote in 2018 and Teach Your Child to Read in 2023.

Recently I came across a YouTube channel where a girl named Melody JY Lyu is teaching Pinyin wrongly.

If this girl Melody JY Lyu, the founder of Mandarin Melon, is not stopped from teaching Pinyin using phonics then I am afraid more teachers may follow her example and start teaching Pinyin the way she does. This will definitely be detrimental to students learning Pinyin and should be nipped in the bud.

Pinyin has 408 syllables which should be taught as they are. Anyone who has learned the syllables correctly and understand the tone marks will be able to read Pinyin just as well as anyone else in the world. If the syllables are taught correctly, no one will ever read a word written in Pinyin wrongly.

This girl, Melody is teaching Pinyin using phonics and the sounds she uses are wrong.

Listen to the following video. LINK

At minute 3.08 she says mo (mwo) en men.

At minute 3.25 she says ne yi for ni?

At minute 3.39 she says te ah for ta?

At minute 5.49 she says ne ah for na?

At minute 9.10 she says le yi ang for liang?

The above continues throughout the video.

Ten days ago, I commented the following on her YouTube channel.

@LuqmanMichel 10 days ago

Thank you for this video teacher. Many teachers teaching English teach phonics. This is the first video where I hear Pinyin pronounced similar to phonics. Does anyone else in China teach this way, please? Do schools use this as a method to teach Pinyin?

I wrote a blog post and posted it on Face Book and tagged Melody. I also tagged her on Twitter.

I did not receive a reply from Melody and I reported this to YouTube as follows:

Issue Misinformation Timestamp selected 0:43

Additional details: No one in the world teaches Pinyin this way. It is detrimental to students wanting to learn Pinyin. It is now 7 days since I asked 'Does anyone else in China teach this way, please? Do schools use this as a method to teach Pinyin?' For details you may refer to my post at 

I look forward to your reply. The time span selected is not correct. See time span on my post.

YouTube immediately responded as follows:

Thanks for reporting.

If we find this content to be in violation of our Community Guidelines, we will remove it.

If YouTube removes it, it will save me time from having to report it to the Chinese authorities. I doubt if YouTube management will do anything.

If this matter is not halted at this stage then I am afraid this new teaching method will proliferate and cause harm to kids who are predisposed to shutting down when confused.