Reading Vowels in Kannada Script

Editor's Comment: The staff of the Journal of Learning Disabilities receives a number of research reports that we and the consulting editors believe would be of interest to some of the readers. Because of space constraints it is not possible to publish all of these manuscripts. Consequently, we ask some authors to provide us with a brief discussion of their study and findings to publish as a Research Brief. Readers who wish a copy of the entire report should write directly to the author(s). The following article, by G. Purushothama from the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, describes the reading of vowels in Kannada script by poor readers.---JLW Among speakers of English, a greater number of vowels are misread by poor readers than are consonants. This is thought to be due to the complex way that vowels are represented in the alphabetic script. In Kannada, which has a phonetically regular script, children learn to read using a clear set of rules with respect to vowels and consonants. The purpose of this study was to determine the nature of misreadings of vowels by two groups, good readers and poor readers of Kannada. The poor readers misread a large number of items in two lists of syllables and words. Both groups misread vowels in equal proportion to their total number of misreadings. The results are discussed.