Dyslexia in China (Part 1)

 

I listened to an interesting Dialogue between Martin Bloomfield and Maggie Chiang, who translated the book The Dyslexic Advantage into Chinese. LINK

Maggie Chiang:

The Chinese language uses pictograms so dyslexia and symbols usually go hand in hand. A lot of the time these individuals might struggle in mathematics, chemistry, physics, or English.

Martin Bloom field.

Is it true that when you read Chinese script, these pictograms or logograms the part of the dyslexic brain that struggles with phonological processing or phonological decoding doesn't actually read these logograms and so it’s difficult to pick up dyslexia?

My thoughts:

Maggie says that ‘dyslexic’ kids don’t have a problem with Chinese characters, which is what I understand.

Again, Martin talks about phonological processing when he was informed by me that ‘Dyslexic’ kids don’t have a problem with phonological awareness deficit. Since 2010 I argued that the over 80 students I taught could read in Malay and those who went to vernacular schools could read in Pinyin and therefore phonological awareness deficit cannot be the problem with kids reading in English. This theory that phonological awareness deficit is the cause of dyslexia was debunked around 2017. You may read some of the articles I wrote by Googling. LINK

This guy may next try and convince others that he is an expert in Brain Imaging and knows the part of the dyslexic brain that struggles with phonological processing. 

Maggie Chiang:

 

This is partially true but there are other studies stating that there are parts of a character when you're writing that could be flipped it could be miswritten or you could miss a part of it, I would say that it does impact. Some would even say English is easier and more friendly for the dyslexic than Chinese.

 

My response:

I don’t understand the meaning of ‘partially true’. This statement appears to contradict what Maggie said in her first statement above – ‘The Chinese language uses pictograms so dyslexia and symbols usually go hand in hand.’

The part where she says that the writing could be flipped is copy-pasting what many have said about kids transposing letters when reading in English. 

I would love to see the research reports that state that English is easier and more friendly for the dyslexic than Chinese. 

 

Martin Bloom field:

I spent 10 weeks in China a few years ago and I found that once I was in one place for a week I could mimic and essentially copy certain phrases.

 

My response:

And, this guy keeps saying that he is a dyslexic and dyslexics have a phonological awareness deficit. How, does one with a phonological awareness deficit mimic and copy phrases?

This is the kind of nonsense guys like Martin say on social media and get away with it by avoiding questions raised.

Note: I have had discussions with Drs Brock and Fernette Eide, the authors of ‘The Dyslexic Advantage’ several times and they did not respond when I said that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of dyslexia.