Are Whole Word Kanji Easier to Learn than Syllable Kana?

Author(s): Danny D. Steinberg and Jun Yamada

Source: Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1978 - 1979), pp. 88-99
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/747295
Accessed: 12-01-2016 04:51 UTC

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88 READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY * Number 1, 1978-1979 XIV/I

Are whole word kanji easier to learn than syllable kana?*

DANNY D. STEINBERG
University of Hawaii
JUN YAMADA
Hiroshima University

THERELATIVE DIFFICULTY of learning Japanese word kanji and

syllable kana is investigated. The subjects were 42 children, 3 and 4
years of age. They were each presented 4 items to learn, 2 kanji and 2
individual kana writing symbols. Items consisted of 84 different
kanji and 84 different kana symbols. It was found that the kanji were
more easily learned despite being vastly more graphically complex.
Of the kanji, 37 per cent were learnedwithin 3 trials; 15 per cent were
learned on the first trial. Most kana were not learned at all.
Meaningfulness is interpreted as being much more important in
learning writing symbols than is perceptual complexity.

Les Mots complets kanji sont-ils plus faciles a apprendre que les
syllabes kana?
ONA EXAMINE LADIFFICULTE relative A apprendre les mots japon-
nais kanji et les syllables kana. Les sujets de l'experience 6taient 42
enfants ag6s de 3 et 4 ans. On a donn6 a chacun d'entre eux 4 616-
ments A apprendre, 2 kanji et 2 symboles linguistiques individuels
kana. Les l66ments de l'exp6rience comprenaient 84 kanji divers et
84 symboles kana diff6rents. On a remarqu6 que les kanji 6taient
plus faciles &apprendre, bien qu'ils soient graphiquement plus com-
pliqu6s. 37% des kanji ont 6t6 appris en 3 6preuves; 15% ont 6t6
apprise des la lere 6preuve. La plus grande partie des kana n'a pas 6t6
apprise. Le sens d'un symbole est interpr6t6comme 6tant beaucoup
plus important quand on apprend des symboles d'6critureque n'est
la complexit6 visuelle du symbole.

?Es mds fdcil aprender palabras kanji que silabas kana?

SE INVESTIGO
LA DIFICULTADrelativa en el aprendizaje de palabras
kanji y silabas kanja en 42 nifios de entre 3 y 4 afios de edad. A cada
uno se le di6 4 objetos para aprender: 2 kanji y 2 simbolos kana in-

* We are greatly indebted to Naoki Oka of the Department of Psychology, Hiroshima University,
for the valuable assistance that he provided in the planning, execution, and analysis of this experi-
ment. We are further indebted to Yoko Nakano, Seiko Hirakawa, and Setsuko Kanemoto for
their fine efforts on our behalf.

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Learningkanjiand kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 89

dividuales.Cada objeto consisti6 de 84 kanji diferentesy 84 kana

Se observ6queel aprendizaje
diferentes. del kanjies maisfdcila pesar
de que geogrificamentees considerablemente maiscomplejo.El 37
porcientode los kenjifue aprendidodentrode tresoportunidades; el
15 porcientode ellos en una oportunidad.Muchaskana no fueron
aprendidas.Se interpretaque lo que el simbolorepresentaes mucho
mis importante,al aprendera escribirsimbolos,que la complejidad
del simbolo mismo.

In Japan, 2 types of writing symbols are used: kana and kanji.

Each kana symbol represents a syllable of the language, while essentially
the kanji are symbols which represent the morphemes of the language.
(In English, basically each letter or combination of letters represents a
phoneme of the language.) Most Japanese, laymen and educators,
believe that kana are easier to learn than kanji because kanji are
graphically much more complex and more difficult to write. This is
probably the main reason underlying the tradition followed by the Japan
Ministry of Education that children in the schools be taught kana before
kanji.
This study compares the difficulty of learning to read kana
and kanji by giving 3- and 4-year-old Japanese children 2 kana and 2
kanji writing symbols to learn. In the experiment, the 2 types of kana
symbols were used: hiragana and katakana. The difference in the types is
that hiragana symbols are more cursive and elaborate than katakana
symbols. Children younger than the age of 5 were selected as subjects
because children generally have already learned many kana by the age of
5 years (Muraishi, 1974). (Kanji are not taught until children are 6 or 7
years of age.) Since it is generally believed in Japan that children cannot
learn kanji before 5 years of age, having younger children as subjects
serves a secondary purpose-to determine if young children have the
ability to learn kanji.
A search of the literatureuncovered no research on the relative
difficulty learning kana and kanji. Besides a lack of research, there has
of
been little serious discussion of the issue, with the exception of Ishii
(1969) and Ibuka (1973). They hypothesized that kanji are not more
difficult to learn than kana.

The Japanese writing system

A brief introduction to the essentials of the Japanese writing
system should help readers unfamiliar with Japanese to better
understand the study reported here. The Japanese writing system is

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90 QUARTERLY*
READING RESEARCH Number 1, 1978-1979 XIV/I

actually not a homogeneous one, but is composed of 3 systems: kanji,

hiragana, and katakana-each of which could serve as an independent
writing system. The kana systems, hiragana and katakana, are both
speech-sound based systems in which each writing symbol represents a
syllable of the spoken language. The hiragana symbols are fancier than
the plainer, easier-to-write katakana symbols. Consider, for example, the
word karate. It is composed of 3 syllables: "ka,""ra,"and "te";and each
of the kana systems has a written symbol for each syllable:
"
Hiragana: , ("ka"), 5 ("ra"), ("te")
Katakana: ("ka"), - ("ra"), " ("te")
In modern Japanese writing, hiragana is typically used to write
grammatical particles, for example, the topic particle f4 wa; and it is
used to write certain native words such as 3 t Ak- uchiwa (fan).
Katakana is typically used for writing borrowed foreign words, for
example, jk' E" terebi (television). Even though uchiwa could be
written in katakana and terebi in hiragana, the practice is not to do so.
Most words in Japanese, however, are written in kanji, the
character system which originally came from China. Essentially, each
kanji represents a morpheme of the language. For example, the word
karate is composed of 2 morphemes, 'kara' (empty) and 'te' (hand). This
word is generally written in kanji, which has a written symbol for each
morpheme. The kanji for 'kara' is and the kanji for 'te' is . The whole
word, then, is written as ! . Morphemes are units of language that
carry a meaning. Syllables in Japanese, as in English, often do not carry a
meaning since they are essentially a speech-sound category.
The writing system is more complex than indicated above,
however, because kanji may have hiragana symbols added to them, as in
the case of verbs and adjectives. The root predicate morpheme will be
written in kanji and added to it will be the Japanese grammatical ending,
but written in hiragana. While kanji and hiragana are mixed to form
words, the katakana and hiragana systems are not. Either one or the
other is used in writing a word. Thus, the word terebi is typically written
all in katakana, rarely in hiragana, but never in a mix of both.

Method
Subjects
The subjects were 42 children who attend nursery school in a
middle income neighborhood in Hiroshima City.' There were 14 girls
1. We would like to express our thanks to Prof. Seisoh Sukemune and Prof. Shinji Ishii of
Hiroshima University and the following nursery school principals in Hiroshima City for their
cooperation and assistance: Ms. Yuriko Kawamoto of Senda Nursery School and Mr. Ryuzo
Matsuo of Mimyo Nursery School and Kindergarten.

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Learning kanji and kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 91

and 28 boys. Seventeen of the children were 3 years old, and 25 were 4
years old. The children were randomly selected from a number of classes.

Materials
The subjects were each presented 2 kanji and 2 kana items
drawn from 42 kanji nouns, 21 kanji verbs, 21 kanji adjectives, 42
individual hiragana symbols, and 42 individual katakana symbols. The
84 kanji words were selected at random from the first 4 grades of kanji
that is prescribed for teaching by the Japan Ministry of Education.2 Most
of these words are known in speech by nursery school children. The
grading of this vocabulary is made by the Ministry generally not on the
basis of reading difficulty but of writing difficulty. Simpler kanji (in
terms of number of strokes) are generally taught sooner. In this
experiment, a kanji item was not included in the selection if it was felt that
the word was not in the speech-understandingvocabulary of the subjects.
A summary of the characteristics of the kanji words with respect to
grammatical class and grade level is shown in Table 1. The particular
kanji words are listed in Table 4 of the Results section.
Table1 Frequencyof kanjitest items by gradeand grammaticalclass
Grade Noun Verb Adjective Total
1 12 1 6 19
2 13 3 5 21
3 11 8 6 25
4 6 9 4 19
Total 42 21 21 84

For the kana, 42 hiragana and 42 katakana items were

selected from the possible 45 basic symbols. The 42 syllables are:a, i, u, e,
o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so, ta, chi, tsu, te, to, na, ni, nu, ne, no,
ha, hi, hu, ho, ma, mi, mu, me, mo, ya, yu, yo, ra, ru, re, ro, and wa. The
syllables he and ri were not included because their hiragana and katakana
forms are almost identical. The syllabic n was omitted because it is not
easy to pronounce or to perceive in isolation. Most of the 42 selected
syllables are not meaningful for the subjects.
Each subject was given 4 items to learn: 1 kanji noun, 1 kanji
verb or adjective, 1 hiragana symbol, and 1 katakana symbol. Each item
was drawn randomly from its respective set. Each of the items was
written in standard form on a small card (7.5 cm x 12.5 cm). Since each
subject learned each of the 4 types of items, each subject served as his or
her own control.
2. In Japan, children generally begin Grade 1 at 7 years of age.

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92 READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY * Number 1, 1978-1979 XIV/ 1I

Procedure
Each of the subjects was pretested for knowledge of kana
symbols. (Their knowledge of kanji would be negligible since kanji are
not taught to children by their parents or teachers until they are at least in
Grade 1 of elementary school.) The children were shown individual
hiragana and katakana symbols on cards and were asked to verbally
identify them. Children who could identify more than 1 such symbol were
not kept as subjects.
The subjects were each given 1 identification trial and 10
experimental trials on their 4 items, in a paired-associate learning
paradigm. That is, 11 trials were given for the same 4 items. This
paradigm is similar to the one used by teachers in Japan where kanji and
kana are generally taught as isolated items which children are requiredto
memorize. The kana are taught in order. There is a specific orderjust as
there is an order to the ABC's.
In the identification trial, each item was shown to the subject
and verbally identified by the experimenter. The subject was asked to
repeat what the experimenter said. In each experimental trial, the
subjects were shown the item and given about 4 seconds in which to make
a verbal response. If the response was a correct one, the subject was
praised. If the response was incorrect, or if none was made, the subject
was told the correct response and asked to repeat it.
Each subject was tested individually. He or she was given
instructions regarding the task and was further told that on finishing the
task, he or she would be given a reward. The subject was then shown a
number of decorated pencils and was told that one of these would be the
reward. Every subject was given one as a reward regardless of how he or
she performed. During the experiment, the experimenters were friendly,
warm, and encouraging.
Presentation order. So as to control for any possible serial
order bias in the presentation of items, the trials for each subject were
systematically varied regarding the order of type of item (noun, verb, or
adjective kanji, hiragana, and katakana). With regard to this control, a
total of 4 different orders of items were presented to each subject on the
10 experimental trials. A subject's orders were: ABCD, BCDA, CDAB,
and DABC, where A = a noun kanji, B = a verb or adjective kanji, C = a
hiragana symbol, and D = a katakana symbol. Trials 1, 5, and 9 were
given in the same order; and each of the other 3 orders were used in either
Trials 2, 6, and 10;Trials 3 and 7; or Trials 4 and 8. The identification trial
was arbitrarily assigned the same order used on Trials 4 and 8.

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Learning kanji and kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 93

Experimenters. There were 6 experimenters, all of whom

were female undergraduate students at Hiroshima University. Two
experimenters tested each subject. One experimenter presented items
while the other recorded responses.3
Scoring. The total number of correct responses for each of
the 4 items was calculated for each subject. Since 10 experimental trials
were given, scores could range from 0 to 10 on each item. In those cases
where a subject gave correct responses to all items for 2 trials in
succession, the remaining trials were not presented. The subject,
however, was assigned a score which treated all remaining trials as
producing correct responses.

Results
The mean, median, and standard deviation for the kanji
nouns, kanji verbs, the kanji adjectives, the hiragana, and the katakana
are shown in Table 2. Also shown are means derived from combinations
of these 4 basic categories of scores: kanji predicates (verbs plus
adjectives), all kanji (nouns plus verbs plus adjectives), and all kana
(hiragana plus katakana). It is worth noting here that kanji predicates are
graphically more complex in general than are kanji nouns because verbs
and adjectives have hiragana added to them. It might be expected,
therefore, that the kanji predicates would be more difficult to learn
because of this added complexity.

Table 2 Kanji and kana results

MEAN SD MDN N
Kanji noun 5.79 3.31 6.0 42
Kanji verb 5.09 4.35 6.0 21
Kanji adjective 4.81 3.44 5.0 21
Kanji predicate (V + A) 4.95 3.88 5.0 42
All kanji combined 5.37 3.61 6.0 84
Hiragana 2.95 3.68 1.0 42
Katakana 2.21 3.37 0.0 42
All kana combined 2.58 3.52 0.0 84

The table shows that the kanji means and medians are all
higher than the kana means, and that the means and medians for the
kanji nouns are higher than that for kanji verbs, adjectives, and their
combination. A 1-way analysis of variance, repeated measures (Winer,
1971, p. 268), was run on the 4 means representing the different types of

3. We are grateful to Tomoko Muramoto, Junko Ota, Sanoe Sakura, and Kumiko Tatsuno for
their help in the testing of subjects.

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 94 QUARTERLY *
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items: kanji nouns (5.79), kanji predicates (4.95), hiragana (2.95), and
katakana (2.21). The kanji verbs and adjectives were combined for this
analysis because the difference in score between them is so slight and
because they have similar orthographic and linguistic characteristics as
compared to nouns.) There is a significant main effect for the type of
writing symbol, F - 10.91; df = 3, 123;p <.01.
All possible pairings of these 4 means were tested for
significance by use of the Newman-Keuls method (Winer, 1971, p. 270).
The results show that there is a significant difference between means at
the .05 or .01 level for all cases except kanji nouns and predicates, and,
between hiragana and katakana. The details of the analysis are shown in
Table 3.
Table3 Newman-Keulstest resultson differencesbetweenmeans for the 2
kana and the kanjinouns and predicates
Kata- Hira- Kanji Kanji
kana gana Pred. Noun
2.21 2.95 4.95 5.79
Katakana 2.21 - - -- 0.74 2.74** 3.58**
Hiragana 2.95 ---- 2.00** 2.84**
Kanji predicate 4.95 ---- 0.84
Kanji noun 5.79
<
**p .01, where the critical formeansseparatedby2 steps= 1.87,by3 steps= 2.12,andby4 steps= 2.27.
difference

Table4 Kanjiitems by score and gradefor nouns, verbs,and adjectivesa

NOUNS
Score f Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4
10 6 hana (flower) umi (sea) hashi (bridge) kori (ice)
sake (wine)
kusuri (medicine)
9 4 ue (top) koe (voice) atama (head) hata (flag)
8 6 onna (woman) yuki (snow)
mizu (water) asa (morning)
aida (between)
uma (horse)
7 4 ame (rain) hito (man) otlto (younger hana (nose)
brother)
6 6 ha (tooth) niku (meat) abura (oil)
chikara (force) kai (shellfish)
machi (town)
5 3 higashi (east) owari (end)
minami (south)
4 2 mimi (ear)
kawa (river)
3 2 isuki (moon)
te (hand)
2 2 hatake (field)
katana (sword)
1 2 haru (spring) hoshi (star)
0 5 hidari (left) kusa (grass) kawa (skin)
kin (gold) tetsu (iron)
Total 42 11 14 11 6

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Learning kanji and kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 95

VERBS
Score f Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4
10 5 umareru (be born) kau (buy) noboru (climb)
taberu (eat)
okiru (wake up)
9 3 miru (see) tobu (fly)
iku (go)
8 1 ochiru (fall)
7 1 hataraku (work)
6 1 naku (cry)
5 1 yaku (burn)
4 0
3 0
2 1 hirou (pick up)
1 2 matsu (wait)
susumu (advance)
0 6 tsukuru (make) tomaru (stop) musubu (tie)
narau (learn)
kesu (put out)
utsu (hit)
Total 21 1 3 8 9
ADJECTIVES
Score f Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4
10 1 shiroi (white)
9 4 chiisai (small) atsui (hot) mijikai (short)
toi (far)
8 1 okii (big)
7 2 takai (high) hiroi (wide)
6 1 samui (cold)
5 2 tsuyoi (strong) karui (light)
4 2 kuroi (black)
akarui (bright)
3 1 kanashii (sad)
2 2 furui (old) tanoshii (happy)
1 2 tadashii (correct)
akai (red)
0 3 aoi (blue) hayai (fast) yoi (good)
Total 21 6 5 6 4
to an oversight, 2 pairs of homophones were included in the stimulus materials:hana (flower) and hana (nose), kawa
"aDue
(river) and kawa (skin). For convenience, the items are scored as if the subjects were aware of the intended meaning.

In order to assess the relative difficulty in learning particular

kanji items, all 84 of them may be ordered in terms of the score obtained
on each. The individual kanji items, ordered according to score,
grammatical class and Japan Ministry of Education grade level are
shown in Table 4.
A summary of the data in Table 4 is shown in Table 5. In this
table, kanji items are grouped on the basis of grade level and the means
for each grade is calculated. There is clearly no difference between grade
level and learning score.
The hiragana and katakana items may be ordered too on the
basis of obtained learning score. These results are shown in Table 6. A
correlation was run in order to determine if there was a relationship

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96 RESEARCH
READING * Number 1, 1978-1979
QUARTERLY XIV/I

Table5 Kanjiitems summarizedon the basis of grade

No.
Grade Items Mean
Grade i 18 4.89
Grade 2 22 5.55
Grade 3 25 5.28
Grade 4 19 5.37
Total 84

Table6 Hiraganaand katakanaitems by score

Score f Hiragana Score f Katakana
10 3 u, ke, to 10 3 ta, te, ru
9 3 shi, nu, ma 9 1 shi
8 1 tsu 8 1 a
7 4 ki, fu, me, re 7 2 ki, chi
6 1 ni 6 1 ra
5 1 a 5 2 ka, to
4 2 i, ne 4 2 i, ro
3 1 ha 3 2 ho, mu
2 3 ku, sa, chi 2 1 ku
i 3 o, te, ra 1 1 yo
0 20 e, ka, ko, su, se, so, ta, na, no, 0 26 u, e, o, ke, ko, sa, su, se, so,
hi, ho, mi, mu, mo, ya, yu, yo, tsu, na, ni, nu, ne, no, ha, hi,
ru, ro, wa fu, ma, mi, me, mo, ya, yu, re,
wa

between the score obtained for a hiragana item and the score obtained on
the corresponding katakana item: that is, the 2 kana forms for the same
speech syllable were correlated. Thus, for example, the score of 0 for
hiragana ka was correlated with the score of 5 for katakana ka.4 The
Pearson r of -.015 is not significant.
A correlation was run on the 42 kanji nouns in order to
determine whether there was a relationship between the number of
strokes in a kanji noun and its obtained score. The resulting r of +.261 is
not significant.
In order to determine whether there was a relationship
between the obtained learning score for kanji and kana items and the
meaningfulness (M) of those items, a crude additional mini-experiment
was run.5 M scores (estimates of meaningfulness) were collected from 3-
and 4-year-old nursery school children who were comparable to the

4. For the remainder of the text of this report and in all the tables, we will often use the romanized
spelling of Japanese syllables and morphemes to represent the Japanese kana and kanji writing. The
reader should keep in mind, however, that the subjects were presented the Japanese kana and kanji
writing and not the romanization.
5. We are indebted to Michiko Matsuda Tashiro and Michie Yamura Harada for the testing of
these subjects.

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Learning kanji and kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 97

subjects of the main study. Groups of 15 children were simply asked

whether they knew the meaning of each of the kanji and kana items. The
children were asked to raise their hands if they knew the meaning of the
item. The number of hands raised per item was counted and served as the
M score. Thus, if all subjects agreed that it was meaningful, an item
received a score of 15, the maximum. If there was no response from all
subjects, the item received a score of 0, the minimum. A correlation
coefficient between learning score and M score was calculated for all 168
items (84 kanji, 84 kana). The obtained r =+.345. That value is significant,
p <.01. The kanji generally received higher learning and higher
meaningfulness scores than did the kana.

Discussion
Relative ease of kanji learning
The results clearly show that young children learn kanji words
more quickly than they do individual kana symbols. Such is the case even
when kanji verbs and adjectives are involved. This is somewhat
surprising when one considers that Japanese verbs and adjectives are
written with 2 types of symbols, kanji plus hiragana. Such items are thus
more complex and lengthy than any individual kana.
Since kanji forms are associated with speech words that are
meaningful for children and the kana forms are associated mainly with
meaningless speech syllables, this study indicates that it is the variable of
meaningfulness that is producing the higher scores for kanji recognition.
Meaningfulness was of such great importance that its effects over-
powered that of visual perceptual complexity. The view of a theorist,
such as Smith (1973, 1977), who stresses the importance of meaningful-
ness in reading thus finds support from these results. Also indicative of
the potency of meaningfulness in the learning of written forms is the fact
that the children learned kanji items irrespective of their differing visual
complexity-as measured by number of strokes or grade level. For
example, kanji items composed of as many as 16 strokes, hashi (bridge)
and kusuri (medicine), were learned on the first trial. These findings are
in accord with the results of Fukuzawa (1976) who found that meaning
and not perceptual complexity mainly determined the acquisition rate of
kanji for elementary and middle school children.
Furthermore, the significant correlation of +.345 between
learning score and the measure of meaningfulness (M) indicates the
relevance of the role of meaning in learning, with higher learning scores
occurring with higher meaningfulness scores. Such a correlation
undoubtedly would be much higher had a better estimate of

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98 READING
RESEARCH * Number 1, 1978-1979
QUARTERLY XIV/I

meaningfulness been made. Having children raise their hands in a group

situation in response to whether or not they know the meaning of an item
is hardly a refined measure. A more valid measure would involve
individual testing and a means of determining the strength or importance
of an item for the child. That a significant correlation was obtained at all
in such a crude test situation may be interpreted as indicating the
relevance of the meaning variable.

Whole word teaching

One might speculate on what the findings suggest for teaching
reading. One possibility is that teaching reading on a word basis may be
more effective than on a syllable basis. After all, it is the word, not the
syllable unit, that typically carries meaning. Thus, the practice of
teaching isolated syllables is perhaps not the most efficient way. Instead
kana might be taught through a whole word approach. That is, words
which are normally written in kana are taught as whole words. Then
children may induce for themselves what the syllable values for each
symbol are. Or, the children may be taught the sound values of the
symbols directly once a number of whole words have been learned. In
either case, learning to read may be improved.
In teaching kanji, there is no decision to be made on method.
One is obliged to teach according to a whole word method because the
kanji symbol represents a whole morpheme and not an individual sound
unit. Perhaps all children should be started off on whole word learning. It
may well be that one of the main reasons Japanese do not suffer from
reading deficiencies to any extent is that most of their learning involves
kanji (around 1,850), all of which are associated with meaning.
The hypothesis of Makita (1968) that the Japanese have so few
reading problems because they have simple and accurate kana systems is
not a defensible one. He fails to consider that the typical Japanese
sentence involves kanji words in the majority and that most of the time
devoted to the teaching of reading in the schools is for kanji and not kana.
A kana explanation obviously fails to account for the learning of kanji
words.
The findings of this study also help to explain the previously
puzzling results of Rozin, Poritsky, and Sotsky (1971). They found that
children with serious reading problems were able to make rapid progress
in learning a kanji type writing system for English where each written
symbol represented a whole word. If the children had previously been
taught by non-meaningful methods, then we might expect, on the basis of

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Learning kanji and kana STEINBERG and YAMADA 99

the results of the present investigation, that they would do better in

learning the meaningful kanji words.

Younger children learn fast

This study further demonstrates that young children can learn
complicated visual symbols like kanji very quickly. The 3 and 4 year olds
in this experiment learned 31 of the 84 kanji (about 37 per cent) in 3 or
fewer trials. (See Table 4 for the frequencies for scores 10, 9, and 8).
Twelve of the kanji (about 15 per cent) were learned on the very first trial.
The common Japanese belief that young children cannot learn kanji thus
has no empirical support. The capacity of young children has been
greatly underestimated. It may be advantageous, therefore, to begin the
teaching of reading to children in their nursery school years as some
theorists, for example, Steinberg and Steinberg (1975) and Soderbergh
(1977), have advocated. Of course, learning to read words is not all there
is to reading. However, it is an important fundamental.

References

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