Abstract:
Research on reading has been mostly influenced by research findings on reading in
English as well as reading in Romance languages. Phonological awareness is now
considered the main linguistic factor contributing to reading acquisition (Durgunoglu,
Nagy & Hancin-Bhatt 1993). Out of the several phonological phenomena related to
reading, a high level of phonemic awareness was long held to be the most important
characteristic of a good reader. Research on other alphabets in the last two decades,
however, has shown that this is too simplistic a view. Findings of studies on Hebrew,
Arabic and Korean have complicated the previously held views on reading acquisition by
questioning the bias towards the Roman alphabet in research. The previous decade has
also seen a limited amount of research on reading in syllabaries, such as Hindi and
Kannada, which has contested the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition
(Karanth 2002). I have reviewed studies on both alphabets and on syllabaries to show that
the type of phonological awareness used for reading differs according to the
characteristics of the script and that the first language acquisition of reading affects
acquisition of reading in other languages.
