Unlocking the Potential of China's Dyslexic Students (Part 2)

 

This article was written in 2018 and the situation is still the same. It will never improve as China is barking up the wrong tree.

Here are extracts from Sixth Tone and my thoughts.

Sixth Tone:

How Dyslexia Remains Invisible in Chinese Schools

The need for recognition of the learning disability in China is pressing: An estimated 11 percent of the country’s primary school students have dyslexia, a total of about 10 million children, according to research published in 2016 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Despite this staggering number, there is little understanding and barely any support for dyslexic students on the Chinese mainland — the Weining center, located in southern tech hub Shenzhen, is one of few organizations dedicated to the cause. Dyslexia is well-known and well-researched in many Western countries, but awareness of the disability remains low across the Chinese mainland; without support, those affected are unable to compete in school, stifling their future potential.

Xiaogu could not understand why he struggled so much in something his peers could easily master. His aversion to schoolwork grew. Eventually, he stopped trying altogether, submitting blank exam papers even though he could have answered some of the questions.

My thoughts:

The story of Xiaogu exemplifies the struggles of dyslexic students in China. Xiaogu excelled at skills like game design and making friends, but learning to read and write Chinese characters proved an insurmountable obstacle. His teachers dismissed his difficulties as "laziness," leading to frustration, poor performance, and eventual disengagement from schoolwork.

The article says: ‘Dyslexia is well-known and well-researched in many Western countries’

This is incorrect as Western countries are still groping in the dark as to why curious, intelligent kids can’t read in English. In my book Shut Down Kids, I have identified the main reasons and elaborated them with corroborative evidence. Westerners have not accepted the reasoning due to their vested interest.

The Chinese on the other hand are looking at research Reports written by Westerners instead of looking at them with an unbiased mind.

The article further adds that his teachers dismissed his difficulties as "laziness," leading to frustration, poor performance, and eventual disengagement from schoolwork.

This is exactly what researchers and teachers say about ‘dyslexic’ kids in the Western world. Why would a smart kid disengage from learning to read Chinese characters?

He has disengaged because kids in China have to learn Pinyin during the first 3 years. However, Pinyin is taught using initial sounds used in the Bopomofo system. This confuses curious, intelligent kids who can’t understand why mo + en sounds out men; fo + ei sounds out fei, etc. This is not how Pinyin was intended to be taught. Curious kids shut down from learning to read and are wrongly classified as dyslexic. LINK LINK

The LINKS above highlight the issue of some Chinese teachers incorrectly teaching Pinyin by using initial sounds from Bopomofo instead of the proper Pinyin pronunciations. This is detrimental to children's learning of Pinyin and can lead to disengagement and difficulties in reading.

To address this, China should examine the ways Pinyin is being taught in schools and ensure teachers use the proper Pinyin pronunciations, without the extraneous sounds from Bopomofo. Correcting this teaching method could unlock the potential of many students currently being failed by the education system.

I discussed this issue with teachers in China and Taiwan and found that many students are unable to read proficiently in both Pinyin and English due to this improper teaching method.

Here is an answer from the editor of DigMandarin website: 

To make the instructions clearer and more acceptable to learners, we often add a vowel afterward when pronouncing the initials to strengthen the pronunciation in our traditional Pinyin teaching method. For example, "b" is pronounced as "b+o" and "p" as "p+o." This method does not affect the spelling of Pinyin syllables but helps learners better understand the pronunciation. LINK

Sixth Tone:

People with dyslexia have trouble both reading and writing. According to Tan Lihai, director of the Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, the disability is more difficult for children who learn to read and write in Chinese, a language with thousands of characters.

My thoughts:

This is incorrect. Educators in China ought to examine records to determine the percentage of kids who were unable to read Chinese Characters in the 60s and 70s – that is before Pinyin was corrupted by some external force.

The main issue is not that Chinese is an inherently more difficult language for dyslexic students, as suggested by the quote from Tan Lihai. The real problem lies in how Pinyin, the phonetic system used to teach reading and writing of Chinese characters, is being taught incorrectly by many teachers in China. This has now spilled over to Sabah. 

 

Sixth Tone:

Words in alphabetic languages use a standard set of letters and are written the same way as they are pronounced, but a Chinese character contains little to no information about its corresponding sound.

 

My thoughts:

Why then is the percentage of dyslexics in the English-speaking world been around 20 percent for decades?

 

Sixth Tone:

Dyslexia has been studied in Europe since the late 19th century, but until the 1980s, experts believed it didn’t affect Chinese speakers, and the field didn’t gain much traction among researchers in China until the 1990s.

 

My thoughts:

I was told by an American teacher who lived in China for 6 years around the 1980s that hardly any kid could not read in Chinese.

The problem of children being unable to read Chinese characters became rampant in the 1990s because teachers taught Pinyin with initial sounds from Bopomofo.

With the right approach, China's dyslexic students may well become inventors, entrepreneurs, and creative leaders of tomorrow. These are the students Maggie Chiang mentioned in her interview with Martin Bloomfield. LINK

In summary: The article from Sixth Tone highlights a significant issue facing dyslexic students in China - a lack of awareness and support for this learning disability. While the statistics provided suggest a large number of affected children (around 10 million), the article fails to fully address the root causes behind this problem.