ABSTRACT

In early Finnish reading instruction, hyphens are used to denote syllable boundaries. However, this practice slows down reading already during the 1st grade. It has been hypothesized that hyphenation forces readers to rely more on phonology than orthography. Since hyphenation highlights the phonology of the word, it may facilitate reading during the very first encounters of the word. To assess whether this is the case, Finnish 1st and 2nd graders read stories about fictional animals while their eye movements were registered. Each story included four occurrences of a novel target (pseudo)word, hyphenated at the syllable level in half of the stories. Target words were read faster with repeated exposure but there were no effects regarding grade or hyphenation. The use of hyphenation does not give rise to enhanced processing of phonology in novel words and is likely to hinder the processes connected to the use of orthography.

摘要

在早期的芬兰阅读教学中，连字符用于表示音节边界。然而，这种做法在一年级时就已经减慢了阅读速度。据推测，断字迫使读者更多地依赖音韵而不是拼字法。由于连字符突出了单词的音系，它可能有助于在单词的第一次遇到时阅读。为了评估情况是否如此，芬兰一年级和二年级学生在记录眼球运动的同时阅读有关虚构动物的故事。每个故事包括四次出现的新目标（伪）词，在一半的故事中在音节级别连字符。重复接触后目标词的阅读速度更快，但对等级或连字符没有影响。