Learning to Read across Languages and Writing Systems

Ludo Verhoeven is coordinator of the Learning and Plasticity Group of the Behaviour Science Institute at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and scientific director of the National Language Education Center. Charles Perfetti is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

• 1. Introduction: universals in learning to read across languages and writing systems Ludo Verhoeven and Charles Perfetti; 2. Learning to read Chinese Becky Chen-Baumgarten and Adrian Pasquarella; 3. Learning to read Japanese Keiko Koda; 4. Learning to read Korean Min Wang, Jeung-Ryeul Cho and Chuchu Li; 5. Learning to read Kannada Sonali Nag; 6. Learning to read Arabic Elinor Saiegh-Haddad; 7. Learning to read Hebrew David Share; 8. Learning to read Greek Athanassios Protopapas; 9. Learning to read Italian Christina Burani, Anna Thornton and Pierluigi Zoccolitti; 10. Learning to read French Helene Deacon, Alain Desrochers and Kyle Levesque; 11. Learning to read Spanish Sylvia Defior and Fransisca Serrano; 12. Learning to read German Karin Landerl; 13. Learning to read Dutch Ludo Verhoeven; 14. Learning to read English Charles Perfetti; 15. Learning to read Czech and Slovakian Marketa Caravolas; 16. Learning to read Russian Elena Grigorenko, Sergey Kornilov and Natalia Rakhlin; 17. Learning to read Finnish Mikko Aro; 18. Learning to read Turkish Aydin Durgunoglu; 19. Epilogue: universals and particulars in learning to read across seventeen orthographies Charles Perfetti and Ludo Verhoeven.

'To sum up in my opinion this book provides invaluable and concise information about the process of reading across different languages … The process of reading and for extension, this book should be in-depth study by linguists, primary teachers, language teachers, psychologists, speech therapists, and even parents. I will strongly recommend this book to every single person that deals with children or adults learning how to read and improve the reading skills, not just in their mother tongues but also in L2.' Pamela Villar González, LINGUIST List