Predicting Reading Development in Assamese Primary School Children With Accuracy and Fluency Tasks

Abstract

Assamese is a language that employs an alpha syllabary orthography. This writing system is complex as an extensive list of orthographic symbols governs it, and an independent set of characters represents many conjunct consonants. In Assamese orthography, the sounds of the language are not always mapped into the symbols, making the system non-transparent. This chapter investigates the predictive validity of fluency and accuracy measures of primary school children learning the complex Assamese orthography. It reports that 13% of children had trouble processing the orthography, and 21% were average readers. Since measures of accuracy and fluency are methods to assess how successfully learners acquire the sound-symbol rules in their language, these tasks can be a valuable measure to distinguish between different profiles of readers in an Assamese classroom. It can also help evaluate the patterns of errors in children, confirming that inconsistent and complex orthography do play a role in problematic reading acquisition.