Syntactic Deficit and Sentence Comprehension of Chinese Dyslexic Children

This research investigated the syntactic ability of Chinese dyslexic children in sentence comprehension. A sentence reading comprehension test consisting of ten types of simple and complex structures was conducted with dyslexic and non-dyslexic primary school students. Results of the test indicate that Chinese dyslexic children were significantly weaker than their non-dyslexic counterparts in sentence comprehension. The syntactic deficit of Chinese dyslexic children was reflected in their poor comprehension of six types of sentence structure. It is suggested that the syntactic ability of Chinese dyslexic children, which is crucial for the enhancement of reading comprehension, needs to be developed.