Typical Behaviors of Young Children Reading Hangul

유아의 한글읽기 행동 유형

Korean children reading Hangul was studied in children between 2 and 5 years of age. Subjects were 400 young children in each age group from kindergartens or day care centers in 6 cities of Jeon-buk Province. Teachers used a checklist based on Lee, Cha-Suk(2003) to assess children's reading ability. Data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, and $x^2$ using SPSS 10.0 program. Results showed age differences in young children's reading of Hangul. Developmental levels consisted of looking at pictures because of absence of linguistic awareness about words, skipping pages of text without pictures, pronouncing phonemes, being aware of phonemes and of the difference between pictures and print, and knowing that the same phonemes can be applied to different words.