Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography

Description

This volume examines the unique characteristics of akshara orthography and how they may affect literacy development and problems along with the implications for assessment and instruction. Even though akshara orthography is used by more than a billion people, there is an urgent need for a systematic attempt to bring the features, research findings, and future directions of akshara together in a coherent volume. We hope that this volume will bridge that gap. Akshara is used in several Indic languages, each calling it by a slightly different name, for example 'aksharamu', in Telugu, 'akshara' in Kannada, and 'akshar' in Hindi. It is the Bhrami-derived orthography used across much of the Indian subcontinent. There is a growing body of research on the psycholinguistic underpinnings of learning to read akshara, and the emerging perspective is that akshara, even though classified as alphasyllabaries, abugida, and semi-syllabic writing systems, is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Rather, akshara orthography is unique and deserves to be a separate classification and needs further investigation relating to literacy acquisition in akshara. The chapters in this volume, written by leading authors in the field, will inform the reader of the current research on akshara in a coherent and systematic way. Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Introduction: Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography (R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine McBride)....Pages 3-9 Indic Scripts: History, Typology, Study (Peter T. Daniels)....Pages 11-42 What Is an Akshara? (Keerthi Ramanujan, Brendan S. Weekes)....Pages 43-52 Front Matter ....Pages 53-53 Orthographic Knowledge, Reading and Spelling Development in Tamil: The First Three Years (Sonali Nag, Balambigai Narayanan)....Pages 55-83 Literacy Acquisition in the Malayalam Orthography: Cognitive/Linguistic Influences within a Multilingual Context (Mimisha Nesan, Amir Sadeghi, John Everatt)....Pages 85-101 Biliteracy Spelling Acquisition in Akshara and English (Pooja Nakamura, R. Malatesha Joshi, Xuejun Ryan Ji)....Pages 103-117 Akshara Processing in Telugu Depends on Syllabic and Phonemic Sensitivity: Preliminary Evidence from Normal Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Children (Vasanta Duggirala)....Pages 119-138 Multiliteracy in Akshara and Alphabetic Orthographies: The Case of Punjabi, Hindi and English Learners in Primary Schools in Punjab (Seema Gautam, John Everatt, Amir Sadeghi, Brigid McNeill)....Pages 139-160 Spelling and Reading Words in Bengali: The Role of Distributed Phonology (Shruti Sircar, Sonali Nag)....Pages 161-179 Assamese Orthography: An Introduction and Some Applications for Literacy Development (Hemanga Dutta)....Pages 181-194 Reading and Writing Sinhala (Marasinghe A. D. K. Wijaythilake, Rauno Parrila)....Pages 195-216 Learning to Read and Write in Thai (Heather Winskel, Theeraporn Ratitamkul)....Pages 217-231 Front Matter ....Pages 233-233 The Assessment of Emergent and Early Literacy Skills in the Akshara Languages (Shaher Banu Vagh, Sonali Nag)....Pages 235-260 The Role of Phonological Processing and Oral Language in the Acquisition of Reading Skills in Devanagari (Nandini Chatterjee Singh, Sumathi T. A)....Pages 261-276 Front Matter ....Pages 277-277 Language-Focused Instruction for Literacy Acquisition in Akshara-based Languages: Pedagogical Considerations and Challenges (Chandrika Mathur, Sonali Nag)....Pages 279-309 Challenges in Learning Akshara orthographies for Second language Learners (Adeetee Bhide, Charles Perfetti)....Pages 311-326 Front Matter ....Pages 327-327 Learning to Read in Their Heritage Language: Hindi-English Speaking Children Reading Two Different Orthographies (Amna Mirza, Alexandra Gottardo)....Pages 329-351 Cross-Modal Processing of Orthography-Phonology Interface in Hindi-English Bilinguals (Ramesh Kumar Mishra)....Pages 353-371 Language and Literacy Practices that Influence Bilingual and Bi-Literate Acquisition in L1 Kannada and L2 English in Bangalore, India (Sunaina Shenoy, Richard K. Wagner)....Pages 373-388