A development trend comparison of reading speed and comprehension between students with visual handicap in Chinese Braille and sighted ones in print

Abstract

At present, most of the comparisons of reading performance (reading speed and reading comprehension) between Braille readers and print readers is focused on English, while there is little research on Chinese in this aspect. To obtain the comparisons, experiments were designed to test the reading performance of Braille readers and print readers, and then the test data were analyzed. The study reveals the differences between Braille readers and print readers in compulsory primary schools for students with visual handicap and sighted ones in Mainland China. It is found that the reading performance of Braille readers is generally lower than that of print readers, but the opposite is true in some instances, notably the average score of reading comprehension among students in sixth grade of primary school in the study. At the same time, it is suggested that the homophones among Chinese characters are among the important factors that have a great influence on the reading performance of Braille readers. From the perspective of the experimental data, the paper illustrates that finding ways to distinguish homophones in Chinese Braille will be one of the key problems to address in order to improve the reading performance of Braille readers.

Keywords

Braille readers Chinese Braille Chinese homophone print readers reading performance

Introduction

Reading speed and reading comprehension, the main elements of reading efficiency, are significant for all students, including both those with visual impairment and sighted ones. As a basic technique, the ability to read has an important influence on everyone’s life (Sadato et al., 1998; Schroeder, 1989). For instance, for both Braille and print readers, the higher the literacy rate, the better the employment prospects (Argyropoulos et al., 2019; Kirsch et al., 2002; Sadato et al., 1996; Wolffe and Kelly, 2011). However, there are distinct differences between Braille reading and print reading, for the simple reason that print is designed for sighted people, whereas Braille is designed for the visually impaired (Koenig and Holbrook, 2000; Lohmeier, 2005). The most obvious difference is the way of learning: tactile or visual (Wormsley, 1997). As Millar (1997) pointed out, reading Braille requires motor and tactile inputs, which are decoded with language and literacy skills – English Braille, Japanese Braille, etc. – to develop meaning. Even so, there are still a great many differences in Braille reading corresponding to a different language (Veispak et al., 2013). Decoding Braille for students is fundamental work. In English, decoding Braille is somewhat easy, for English Braille is largely consistent with its print version, which is determined by the characteristic of English itself. But in Chinese, the case is far more complex.

Relations and differences between Chinese Braille (PRC) and Chinese ordinary text

Compared with English Braille, decoding Chinese Braille is relatively difficult, which is possibly translated to different Chinese characters (called Hanzi in China). There are several kinds of Chinese Braille. Until now, Current Chinese Braille has been the mainstream in the People’s Republic of China, referred to by its other name, Mainland Chinese Braille, in Wikipedia. In essence, completely different from the way English Braille is related to English words, Current Chinese Braille corresponds to Chinese pinyin of Chinese characters. For example, for the English word ‘everyday’, its Braille grade 1 and grade 2 are separately ‘’ and ‘’– we not only can infer the print from its Braille, but can conclude the Braille from its print as well. However, it is not the case for Chinese Braille. Taking one example of Current Chinese Braille, it is possible to translate the Chinese word ‘中点 (zhōng diǎn, midpoint)’ into Braille , , or , while decoding one of the four groups of Braille, ‘中点 (zhōng diǎn, midpoint), 终点 (zhōng diǎn, end), or 钟点 (zhōng diǎn, hour)’ can probably be obtained.

To explain this unique phenomenon in Current Chinese Braille, here are some simple descriptions. According to the rules of Current Chinese Braille, the Chinese character is represented by the similarity of its pinyin. Because of the close relation with pinyin, Current Chinese Braille is also composed of three parts: initial, final, and tone. Furthermore, on condition that Chinese characters’ meaning could be understood with ease according to context, the tone could be absent, which is helpful to decrease the number of Braille cells in the text. In fact, a great number of tone cells are omitted in reality. Therefore, it may be decoded into ‘重点 (zhòng diǎn, emphasis)’ according to the context. In other words, in contrast to English Braille, it is a little more difficult for students with visual impairment in preliminary school to master Chinese Braille, for which the ability to reason is required to some extent. At the same time, in Mainland China, there are two other Braille systems: Hanyu Binary Pinyin Braille (referred to as Two-cell Braille in Wikipedia) and Chinese Common Braille, which are marked tone for the Braille code of each Chinese character and may still be translated by one of the homophones. Moreover, the sentence structure of Chinese Braille is also not the same as that of print, for all Chinese Braille systems in PRC have adopted a set of word-segmentation-linking rules to be convenient to touch and understand them. As an example, the Chinese sentence ‘我喜欢大红花。 (I love the big red flower)’ is first divided into several smaller language units – ‘我 (I) 喜欢 (love) 大红花 (the big red flower)’, and then translated into corresponding Chinese Braille. From the description, it is clear that Chinese print and Chinese Braille are not completely equivalent. These indicate that some viewpoints are correct for English Braille, but cannot be applied to Chinese Braille. In English, the sounds, meaning, and gist of Braille are the same as print when decoding Braille into print (Millar, 1997).

Terms relating to reading

In the paper, several terms relating to reading, reading performance, reading mode and reading pattern will be used. Reading performance is composed of reading speed, reading comprehension, and reading modes such as oral reading, silent reading, tactile reading and visual reading. Reading speed is referred to as the number of Chinese characters per minute (CPM) that can be read, as the Chinese basic language unit is one Chinese character. For instance, the Chinese sentence ‘我爱大红花’ consists of five Chinese characters, while in Chinese Braille it is made up of three Chinese Braille words (我, 爱 and 大红花). To facilitate the comparison of the reading speed of Braille readers and print readers, the reading speeds of Chinese Braille readers were gathered statistically according to characters per minute instead of Chinese words per minute. Thus, though the number of Braille words of ‘我爱大红花’ is three, the reading speed is calculated according to five characters. Tactile reading may be either one-hand reading or two-hand reading, which can be divided into four modes, namely marking, parallel, splitting and scissors.

Research questions

A lot of works have been published in English on the comparison between Braille reading and print reading, but in China such studies are seldom made. Because there exists an obvious difference between Chinese Braille and Chinese print, it is necessary to make a close study of the development trend of Chinese Braille reading from grade 1 to grade 6 in the stage of compulsory primary education by contrast to Chinese print reading. The following were the specific research questions:

What is the variation in individual characteristics concerning Braille readers and print readers in a primary school in China in this research?

When reading orally, what is the difference in reading speed between Braille readers and print readers?

What is the difference in reading comprehension between Braille readers and print readers?

Methods

Participants

Participants were all students from either Jinzhou Special Education Primary School or the Fourth Primary School of Taipusiqi in Northeast China and all were native Chinese speakers. The university’s institutional review board approved the study and the data collection received the consent of the students’ guardians.

Participants consisted of two groups: Braille readers from a compulsory education primary school for students with total blindness or a visual impairment, who read only by touch; and print readers from a regular primary school, whose eyesight was fit for reading print text. A total of 338 students participated in the study: 44 Braille readers came from the school for students with total blindness and visual impairment in Liaoning Province in Northeast China; 294 print readers were from the school for ordinary students in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in North China. The participating students, who are all native Chinese speakers, ranged from grade 1 to grade 6. For more details about the participants, see Table 1.

Table 1.

The basic information of participants.

Feature		Braille readers			Print readers
Feature		Amount	Age range (year)	Average age (year)	Amount	Age range (year)	Average age (year)
Grade 1	Male	3	6–8	7	24	6–7	6.5
Grade 1	Female	4	6–8	7	23	6–7	6.5
Grade 2	Male	4	7–10	8.5	26	7–8	7.5
Grade 2	Female	2	7–9	8	22	7–8	7.5
Grade 3	Male	3	9–11	10	28	8–9	8.5
Grade 3	Female	3	10	10	21	8–9	8.5
Grade 4	Male	5	12	12	23	9–10	9.5
Grade 4	Female	2	11–13	12	27	9–10	9.5
Grade 5	Male	5	12–14	13	26	10–11	10.5
Grade 5	Female	4	12–15	13..5	25	10–11	10.5
Grade 6	Male	6	14–16	15	21	11–12	11.5
Grade 6	Female	3	13–15	14	28	11–12	11.5

Why were the students with blindness and normal eyesight selected from different regions? Some reasons are as follows:

Compared with Liaoning Province, the education level of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is relatively low, especially in the remote areas of Inner Mongolia. For the selected schools, however, one in Liaoning has no preschool education for the blind, while the other in Inner Mongolia has preschool education which is poor for sighted children. From the perspective of preschool education, students from the two regions are comparable to some extent.

The cultures of the two schools are similar, for despite belonging to different provinces, they are very close geographically.

Research design

Braille readers, when reading, will utilize the most skillful reading pattern from one of two Braille reading modes: reading with one hand or with two hands. One of the aims of the study concerned the influence of oral reading on reading performance (reading speed and reading comprehension) of Braille readers. Therefore, any tactile reading pattern was allowed as long as the pattern was familiar for them.

Reading materials, which mainly come from the daily accumulation of experienced teachers from the two schools for the blind and the sighted and have been repeatedly discussed between them, consist of objective test questions. It should also be noted that the selection of experimental materials has the following characteristics:

There are no unknown Chinese characters in these materials, because only in this way can they reflect the equal recognition of Chinese characters for Braille readers and print readers, at least in terms of their pronunciation.

Experimental materials for the blind are written in Current Chinese Braille instead of National Universal Braille (otherwise known as Chinese Common Braille), which is still in the promotion stage at present. Current Chinese Braille is required to be mastered by visually impaired students, for most Braille publications are published in it now.

Experiment 1 (reading speed test)

Experiment 1 was designed to test the reading speed of tactile reading and visual reading. During the test, all the participants used the oral reading state. Because in silent reading it is very apparent that print readers have far more obvious advantages over Braille readers in reading speed, the study did not consider the comparison of reading speed in the silent reading state. For example, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), which is mainly designed for silent reading, allows less than 3 hours for print readers, but more than 20 hours for Braille readers.

In the experiment, different reading materials were allocated according to grade – a total of six types. Whether Braille readers or print readers, the teacher was responsible for testing the students’ reading speed. The testing method used was for the teacher to record the time from the beginning of oral reading of the material until the end of the reading. For each grade, a few students were selected randomly for testing after class every time, so students from each grade carried out several tests over a long period. It is important to emphasize that Chinese reading speed is measured in CPM (Chinese characters per minute), which is similarly measured in WPM (words per minute) in English. Table 2 details the reading speed scores of Braille and print readers respectively.

Table 2.

Reading rate (CPM) of Braille readers and print readers.

Category	Braille readers		Print readers
Category	Amount	Average rate	Amount	Average rate
Grade 1	7	15	47	40
Grade 2	6	30	48	60
Grade 3	6	60	49	110
Grade 4	7	100	50	130
Grade 5	9	130	51	170
Grade 6	9	160	49	200

Experiment 2 (reading comprehension test)

The same standard test material was distributed to Braille readers and print readers. For Braille readers, they could do either oral reading in lower voice or silent reading and their test time was personalized when examined by their teachers, while print readers had to do silent reading and their test time was fixed. Each grade’s reading comprehension was scored by objective questions, which could include filling in the blanks, multiple choice questions, etc., and one point was awarded for each question. For example, there were a total of 15 questions for the reading material of grade 3, so the total possible score was 15 points, and so on. The statistical data are given in Table 3.

Table 3:

The statistical scores of Braille readers and print readers on reading comprehension.

Category	Braille readers			Print readers
Category	Amount	Average score	Full score	Amount	Average score	Full score
Grade 1	7	5	10	47	10	10
Grade 2	6	7	10	48	10	10
Grade 3	6	11	15	49	13	15
Grade 4	7	12	15	50	12	15
Grade 5	9	15	20	51	15	20
Grade 6	9	17	20	49	15	20

The main aim of the study is to explore the reading performance of Braille readers and print readers. Though there are some physical and psychological differences between Braille readers and print readers, which will result in their different understanding of the objective world to some extent, the test materials of reading performance only concern their knowledge and ability in common in the range of teaching programs of primary schools.

Results

It should be noted that this paper is only descriptive, for the first author is a teacher with total blindness and the interface of current statistics software is not user-friendly for the blind. Therefore, further statistical analysis has not been carried out for the time being.

About Braille readers and print readers

Table 1 shows that the number of Braille readers is far fewer than that of print readers, the average age of Braille readers is one to three years older than print readers, and the higher the grade, the greater the age gap. This can be explained as follows:

With the ever-increasing development of the economy and improvement of health conditions in China, the decrease in the number of students with blindness and visual impairment has become an inevitable trend. At present, China not only implements nine-year compulsory education for students with blindness but also provides them with free food, clothing, housing, and transportation to a considerable degree.

Students with blindness and visual impairment are mainly spread in rural areas, for the gap between urban and rural areas is relatively large, with rural areas lagging behind the cities in many aspects, including special education. Therefore, students with blindness and visual impairment are a little older.

Not shown in Table 1, however, is that there is a certain proportion of multi-disabled students in specialist schools for blindness, and students with mild disabilities in ordinary schools, which will become a popular tendency in future in China.

Reading speed

Table 2 indicates that with the improvement of learning grade, the Chinese oral reading speed of both Braille readers and print readers is constantly improving, and for the same grade, print readers can read faster than Braille readers. It is somewhat similar to English reading, but the comparison of reading speed between Chinese and English has not been made, for English is based on English words while Chinese is based on Chinese characters, though Chinese Braille is seemingly based on words. Furthermore, it is not only tactile reading but also the Chinese Braille itself that limits the reading speed. As mentioned in the introduction, there are many homophones in Chinese, and Chinese Braille may correspond to more than one Chinese character, which can only be determined by the context. It is one of the main reasons why reading speed is reduced, because it will likewise take some time to ascertain one character in multiple homophones in Chinese Braille.

Reading comprehension

It is a relative issue to compare the scores of reading comprehension between Braille readers and print readers in Chinese, which is quite different from English. In terms of special education, the situation in China is similar to many other countries: in contrast to sighted students, the examination time of students with blindness can be prolonged, but the difficulty of the examination cannot be reduced. By most people’s cognition, for the same grade, the average score of sighted students should be higher than that of students with blindness. However, this is not entirely the case with the Chinese examination. As shown in Table 3, the full scores of reading comprehension of grades1 and 2, grades 3 and 4, grades 5 and 6 are separately 10, 15, and 20; from grade 1 to grade 3, the mean score of Braille readers is lower than the other group, yet the score gap narrows from 2 to 3, 5 respectively; their average score is the same for grade 4 and grade 5. This trend is easy to understand, because with the increase in age, the physiology and psychology of the students with blindness or visual impairment gradually adapt to the learning environment so that they progressively catch up with the other students in reading comprehension.

However, it is puzzling why the average score of Braille readers in grade 6 is 2 points higher than that of print readers in the same grade. In essence, this is still a result of the existence of a large number of homophones in Chinese Braille. To explain further the phenomenon of homophones in Chinese, this paper takes English as an example: wright, right and write; one and won, are all homophones. Nevertheless, it is not a problem at all for English Braille, for both English words and phonetic symbols have their own Braille forms, while Chinese Braille is far more complex, for Chinese characters have no corresponding Braille forms and they are represented by pinyin.

Discussion

Reading speed and reading comprehension are two key indicators to measure readers’ reading performance. They exist side by side and play a part together. Without reading speed, reading efficiency will be greatly reduced and, similarly, without reading comprehension, reading at a high speed is meaningless. Theoretically speaking, it is inevitable that print readers can achieve a higher performance. However, the particularity of Chinese Braille makes it different from English Braille, Japanese Braille, etc. As for Chinese Braille and English Braille, the former has a lower reading performance than the latter, although few studies have been published in this field. As for the same language, the research on comparison of the reading performance of Braille readers and print readers mainly focuses on English.

At present, there are only Braille forms about pinyin, but not Braille forms about Chinese characters which are approximated by pinyin Braille. To be more precise, Chinese Braille is similar to pinyin, which is similar to English phonetic symbols. Moreover, compared with English, homonyms in Chinese are widespread and numerous. Because of this, Current Chinese Braille ‘’ may be one of such Chinese characters as 士(战士), 氏(姓氏), 示(表示), 世(世界), 市(城市), 柿(西红柿), 式(样式), 试(考试), 拭(擦拭, 拭目以待), 似(似的), 势(形势, 优势), 事(事情), 侍(侍卫, 服侍), 恃(有恃无恐), 饰(装饰), 视(视频), 是(是否), 适(合适), 室(教室), 逝(消逝), 誓(发誓), 释(解释), 嗜(嗜好) and so on, whose pinyin are all shì (Sun and Li, 2019; Zhao, 1959). As for which Chinese character the Braille represents, the reader needs to judge according to the context or even their own knowledge.

Hence, it follows that there are some defects in Chinese Braille, directly causing the lower reading performance in most cases. In certain circumstances (for example, grade 6 in Table 3), however, the average score of Braille readers is higher. Let us give an example to explain why this is the case. For instance, when students write their answers, supposing that the correct answer is 虱子 (shīzi, louse), students with blindness only need to write in Mainland Chinese Braille, while sighted students are required to write 虱子 in Chinese characters, for the Braille form of 虱子 is ‘’. It is quite obvious that it is much easier to write than 虱子, because Chinese Braille, which is classified as a phonetic script and is composed of only 52 Braille letters, can be written in the time it takes to speak it. Chinese characters are a kind of complex hieroglyphic, consisting of more than 200 radicals. Therefore, it is much more difficult to master a Chinese character than to master a Braille one. What is more, mastering the Braille is equivalent to mastering at least two Chinese words, 虱子(shīzi, louse) and 狮子 (shīzi, lion), whose Braille is the same. As a result, in some circumstances, it is not surprising that the scores of students with blindness are higher than those of sighted students.

Finally, it is true that the authors have devoted a lot of effort to this research, but there are many limitations to the study, such as a relatively small sample quantity, especially of blind students.

Implications

This paper has only compared the reading performance between Mainland Chinese Braille readers and print readers. For the convenience of research, the experiment designed here takes reading speed and reading comprehension as two independent variables. From substantial evidence, the experimental data support the theoretical judgment that the general trend is that print readers can obtain better performance than Braille readers, but in certain circumstances, because of the existence of homophones among Chinese characters, the opposite will be true. How to improve the recognition of homophones will become one of the core issues to enhance the efficiency of Chinese Braille reading.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank all the teachers and students who participated in this study.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Authors’ contributions

Yu Sun, general idea and planning; Chunlian Li, original draft; Yingju Sun, experiment implementation and data collection.

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