Reading in German

        German is a language with a transparent orthography, which means that the association between grafeme-phoneme is one to one and highly regular. Compared with other languages, is relatively as transparent as Spanish and Dutch and much more regular than English (Jong & van der Leij, 1999).
        The instruction method used in this country is mainly phonics. The so called initial stage of reading "logographic stage" that applies to English, is omitted. While learning to read in German, the alphabetic stage (access to phonetic) is first reached. However  when reading English a first stage of whole-word or sight vocabulary is needed in order to develop alphabetic strategies.
        Several studies comparing children (7-10 years old) reading in English and German,  found determinant results  in terms of strategy used (alphabetic or orthographic) and reading accuracy (Wimmer & Goswami, 1994; Wimmer and Frith, 1990; Wimmer, 1996). Most of the studies rely on non-word reading tasks to test phonological abilities which are said to be the core of reading. When using non-words, the researcher is able to also test the strategy used by analysing the errors commited. Differences in the nonsense word reading skills could be taken as evidence for two distinct reading styles: an indirect style of word recognition relying on letter-sound conversion (german reading), and a direct style based on whole-word recognition (english reading).The difficulties for English children in reading nonsense words would be explained by some children relying largely on a logographic reading strategy, and having a rather under-developed alphabetic strategy.
    Differences in reading time: German children read nonsense words consistently more quickly than the English children. However, German disabled readers, compared to matched normal  youngers (in reading speed for frequent words),  did show a deficit in non-word reading -although their speed was higher compared to the English disabled group (Wimmer, 1996).The onset measures taken before German children went to school, were only weakly predictive of early reading development in German. Why? Early reading in German depends on GFC. However, the onset-rimes measures (orthographic stage) became predictive later in the reading process.
    Both reading speed and spelling accuracy are highly correlated around 9-10 years of age. Why? Because the timing of direct access depend on orthographic strategies (recognition), in order to ensure automaticity, the use of direct recognition strategies is demanded.German dyslexic children suffer from a "pervasive speed deficit" (Wimmer, 1993). German children use grapheme-phoneme conversion strategies when reading, relying on assembling pronunciations, while English children rely more on orthographic strategies (visual / direct recognition) when reading (Wimmer & Goswami, 1994). Therefore, it will be easier to detect reading disabilities in english with the non-word task assessment. Whereas in German, readers (disabled or not) will be at some sort of  advantage for decoding due to the transparency of the orthography. What these studies suggest is that the "time" spend in reading is an important factor for reading assessment,  in a language with a transparent orthography such as German.

• Comparing German reading acquisition with English reading acquisition, for both languages phonological abilities    seems to be important. However, the process of reading acquisition appears to be somehow inverted, according to Wimmer & Frith (1990):

 

 
Glossary

         GFC: grapheme-phoneme correspondences
 

                                                                                                                                    
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