The impacts of a multimedia platform on Chinese character learning by dyslexic children in Hong Kong

This study investigated the difficulties in Chinese character recognition and decoding by Chinese dyslexic children in Hong Kong and examined the impacts of a multimedia platform on Chinese character learning. About one hundred junior primary school students diagnosed with Chinese dyslexia were involved in the study. As found in previous studies, the Chinese dyslexic children's Chinese character recognition and decoding deficits were related to their weak phonological, orthographic, and morphological abilities. The participating children were trained to use an online multimedia platform for learning Chinese characters regularly for three months. This platform was specifically designed for Chinese dyslexic children at the junior primary level. It consisted of six types of games for learning phonetic components, semantic components, homophones, Chinese characters with similar forms, the correct shape of Chinese characters, and bi-syllabic words with a combination of two characters. The multimedia platform used audiovisual materials, including videos, pictures, animation, and colour. Two modes of games (without a time limit and with a time limit) and two difficulty levels in each type of game were designed to allow children to select the game that matched their ability and to motivate children to take challenges. Immediate feedback with an indication of correct and incorrect answers was provided to children after they had answered each question. An individual record and a reward system that indicated a child’s learning results were provided for self-review. At the end of the training, a survey was conducted with the children, parents, and teachers to collect their feedback on the learning platform. The positive input collected demonstrates the impacts of the multimedia learning platform on arousing dyslexic children’s interest in Chinese character learning, lowering their anxiety in recognising and decoding Chinese characters, and enhancing their accuracy in Chinese character writing.