Effectiveness of Morphological Instructions and Shared Book Reading on Chinese Literacy Development in Children with Dyslexia: A Single-subject Experiment

Abstract

Existing research have reported the effectiveness of Shared Book Reading approach and Morphological Instructions in Chinese literacy in children with and without reading difficulties in China and Hong Kong. In a different context, such as Chinese language in Malaysia and with children diagnosed with dyslexia, effectiveness of Shared Book Reading and Morphological Instructions on Chinese literacy have not been examined yet. In 2010, Wang and Anderson designed a Chinese literacy intervention of Shared Book Reading approach and Morphological Instructions for a Chinese first grader diagnosed with dyslexia with proven effectiveness. The present study investigated the effectiveness of Shared Book Reading approach and Morphological Instructions on Chinese literacy development of children with dyslexia in Malaysia by adapted the Chinese literacy intervention by Wang and Anderson with Malaysian national curriculum for the Chinese language. A 7-year-old Chinese first grader diagnosed with dyslexia was recruited to participate in the present study. The present study employed single-subject experimental design, i.e. A (Baseline 1) - B (Morphological Instructions) - C (Shared Book Reading and Morphological Instructions) - A (Baseline 2) within-subject design. The results suggested that Shared Book Reading approach and Morphological Instructions were effective methods to improve Chinese literacy development in Chinese children with dyslexia. However, the effectiveness of Morphological Instructions would only be significant when it was utilized as a reading strategy along with the implementation of Shared Book Reading. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.