Author:
Harwintha Yuhria Anjarningsih
Affiliation:
Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Keyword(s):
Reading Development, Indonesian Orthography, Syllabic Complexity, Children’s Literacy.
Abstract:
Understanding what happens when children learn to read Indonesian is very important, in terms of both advancing psycholinguistics and improving practices that are done in educational institutions throughout the country. The current study aimed to characterize the normal development of reading in the under-researched, shallow Indonesian orthography. A total of eighty-two children aged 7-9 years old participated by reading aloud 100 words that are of high frequency, monomorphemic, disyllabic, and controlled for syllable structure (simple, diphthongs, digraphs, and consonant clusters). Reading miscues that were committed by the children showed that simple disyllabic words were mastered at the end of grade one, and diphthongs, digraphs, and consonant clusters were mastered later. Results are interpreted based on the predictability of the mapping between graphemes and phonemes in the Indonesian orthography.