Reports two experiments that address effects of differential pre-reading instructions. Suggests that instruction that monitors procedural representations helps readers with foreign language (FL) proficiency to construct situational representations, but is of little help to solve an inference problem. Finds that individuals generate different…

The history of three non-Latin based orthographies--Chinese, Japanese, and Korean--is reviewed in this paper. The characteristics of the three orthographies are examined regarding the ease of learning to read with these varied symbol systems. Attention is given to the incidence of reading disability in different orthographies, and research is…

Analyzes a report by D.D. Steinberg and J. Yamada that investigated which of the different types of scripts used in Japanese writing was the easiest to learn to read. (MKM)

Offers a rebuttal to Tzeng and Singer's criticism of the authors' study of the ease of learning to read the different Japanese scripts. States that the symbols and words were taught in the ordinary situation in which they are learned. (MKM)

Twenty English-Japanese bilingual subjects were given the following reading tasks: timed, silent reading of passages in English and Japanese followed by comprehension tests and recognition of tachistoscopic presentations of twenty words in each language. The amount of reading the subjects had done in English and Japanese was assessed in an…