Abstract

Previous research(Yoon, 1997) showed that the possibility of the orthographic recognition unit based on the subsyllabic intermediate unit in Korean beginning reader. We attempted to reexamine this argument by employing an artificial orthography experiment, created mainly for literate adults, are designed to simulate child-like learning in American adults. In this study we used the almost same material and same task as Yoon(1997)'s experiment to compare the performance pattern between the American subject and the Korean beginner. Through the data from the grapheme substitution/deletion task we wanted to see which part of the grapheme is first to correspond to a phoneme and which part is most difficult to correspond to a phoneme in C₁VC₂ syllable form. The result was dramatically different from the Korean beginner's performance pattern. The performance of the initial consonant substitution was significantly greater than those of the middle vowel and final consonant So American adults showed that the early orthographic recognition unit was thought to be onset-rime (C₁-VC₂) level but the Korean-speaking beginner showed the early orthographic recognition unit was thought to be syllable body-coda (C₁V-C₂) level. The data suggested that the characteristics of syllable structure in a verbal language represented in the process of print-sound correspondence in beginning reading.