ABSTRACT

A note from Ken Goodman: Japanese uses a complex combination of Chinese characters and syllabic characters derived from them in its writing system. Children’s books are often printed totally in the syllabic characters. This study looks at how adult readers read the same text in the syllabic and normal versions. To gain further insights some errors were embedded in each version. The study raises questions about whether it is necessary or useful to have children read in a form which is different from what they see all around them.