Dyslexia in China (Part 3)

 

This is a continuation of my post yesterday. LINK

Here are the paragraphs highlighted in red in yesterday’s post.

As Maggie pointed out, if you cannot achieve the best grades, you are cast out.

Further, students who performed poorly in Pinyin reading tended to perform poorly in future reading comprehension tests.

Previous evidence showed that poor readers in higher grades (e.g. Grade 4) suffer more from Pinyin reading difficulties than normal readers (Yin and Weekes, 2003; Ding et al., 2015).

The Pinyin phonetic symbols are continuously presented alongside Chinese characters in textbooks until Grade 3 and are provided only when new characters are introduced.

Pinyin being screwed up by Wuyue May from tianjin, China

 

                                                      Wuyue May from Tianjin China

When I first saw the YouTube video by Melody JY Lyu, I wrote on my blog post that I hope that her way of teaching Pinyin will not be copied by other teachers. It now appears that she is not the first one and that many other teachers have been teaching the same misleading way. My research into this has led me to many others teaching Pinyin using the sounds of initials as in Bopomofo. 

I have discussed with several teachers in Taiwan and understand that many students in Taiwan are also being taught sounds of consonants with extraneous sounds.

Wuyue May, is one of many teachers from China who is screwing up Pinyin via Face Book. 

Her Face Book page says:

Hello, my name is May and I come from China. Nice to meet you. I am a professional Chinese teacher.We are a professional Chinese language training institution. Please learn Chinese with us.The tuition fee you paid,you will feel that it's worth it. Interested, please choose a time to give free trial classes.

 

Here is her site on Face Book  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100073924385859

Robert Matthews and his argument for Bopomofo

 

Robert Matthews LinkedIn Profile says the following:

My eclectic background (linguistics/biology/humanities+Chi/Fre/Span/Russ), teaching experience, and grasp of technology, make me suited for challenging jobs requiring advanced language skills, especially technical translation, indexing and language training.

Robert Matthews (馬學進) who lives in Taipei wrote the following on Quora in response to my answer.

Robert Matthews:

This addendum is an extended response to a comment by Luqman Michel, who is very upset that Bopomofo (which he seems to regard as backward and harmful), is somehow harming the teaching of Pinyin in Malaysia.

There are teachers from Tianjin, China who are teaching Pinyin using Bopomofo sounds. This is why I asked this question. We in Malaysia did away with Bopomofo in the 70’s and introduced Hanyu Pinyin. Why can’t China get rid of Bopomofo in China?

My response: