Reviewing the whole year’s journey — Evaluative Report

Introduction 

I first heard the word dyslexia after I came to the UK at the age of 23, and at first I was puzzled by the term. Then my girlfriend told me that she was a dyslexic herself and that there were many people around me who suffered from dyslexia in one way or another. This made me realize that dyslexia is not a popular topic, at least in China. After more research, I realized that there is no cure for dyslexia and that a significant proportion of children under the age of 12 in China suffer from dyslexia. These children have difficulty distinguishing between phonics and words due to genetic or environmental influences, resulting in difficulties with word processing behaviours such as reading and writing, which prevent them from achieving academic excellence. However, in China’s social and educational context, academic achievement is often used as a criterion to judge a child’s performance. The People’s Daily once reported that many dyslexic children in China are always criticised and scolded by their parents, and even bullied by their peers, because of their dyslexia in reading and writing. In 2016, China’s CCTV Channel 4 reported that Dr Jia Yun, an expert on dyslexia, conducted a survey on the relationship between dyslexia and young offenders at a juvenile prison in Beijing, and after assessing 50 juvenile male offenders, found that 25 of them were dyslexic, a rate of 50%.This made me realise the seriousness of the matter and I was determined to change this.   

My experience, research, and feedback led me to the question: 

• How can the misconceptions of parents of children with dyslexia be challenged in a Chinese context where academic achievement is paramount.

However, this was not the question at the beginning of my research direction. The process involved was not always smooth and I encountered many difficulties, but the professional feedback from many experts enabled me to establish the topic in the end. The purpose of this report is to summarise my research journey and share my findings. 

Methodology  

My undergraduate related background is in film literature, and I have never been exposed to a relevant academic field regarding dyslexia. My position makes it easier for me to communicate with stakeholders and assist me with the testing of the intervention. However, as a stakeholder, I would not fill out questionnaires or influence the intervention process to maintain the study’s objectivity. 

In this project, I used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research in order to investigate the prevalence of dyslexia-related knowledge in Chinese society. At the quantitative research level, first I did a survey. My questionnaire was administered online to 73 adults with children and educators in China, and consisted of five closed-ended questions and two open-ended questions. The results of the survey showed that 86% of people had never heard of dyslexia. 91% believed that grades were the test of a child’s seriousness in school. There was a general belief that dyslexia can be addressed through multi-medical means. There is also the opinion that instead of spending money on diagnosing dyslexia, it would be better to take that money and enroll in extracurricular classes to improve grades. Second, I read a large number of papers and journals and also conducted a data search. I searched the full-text database of Chinese academic journals using “dyslexia” “Chinese” and “Mandarin” as keywords, but only found 764 studies on dyslexia in China. before 2002， There were only 14 relevant studies before 2002, and the number of studies increased after 2002. Since 2007, research on Chinese dyslexia has entered a boom period, with 83 articles published in 2019. But even so, the history of Chinese dyslexia research in China is still very short compared to the world, and there are still shortcomings in many aspects. 

At a qualitative research level, I chose to interview parents of children with dyslexia as well as experts in the field of dyslexia to explore their perceptions of dyslexia. The first parent gave me some of her child’s words, which her child would see as little people. The second parent talked about his son’s great talent for language and acting. A third parent told me that her child had very severe dyslexia and that for a long time he had been criticised academically by his teachers, which had led to him suffering from very severe depression and that he was often reluctant to interact with people and was undergoing psychotherapy. Dr Zhao Jingjing from the Department of Psychology at Shaanxi Normal University told me. Dyslexia is almost incurable and stays with a child for the rest of his or her life, but children with dyslexia can also be gifted in other ways that are different from the norm. For example, art, acting, sports and organisational skills. The best strategy is obviously to encourage them to develop in areas like what they are good at, and it is clearly not the best option for a dyslexic child to study literature or law-based subjects.

Interventions and feedback

While conducting the primary and secondary research, I designed three interventions to test my ideas. My first idea was to design a software to help children read and I used augmented reality to test this idea. I designed a number of augmented reality word cards. And I got eight children with dyslexia and randomly divided them into two groups of four each. During the trial they were each asked to recite 40 English words beyond their current level of comprehension using the traditional method and the AR method. Finally the number of words they were able to remember was counted. The results of the experiment showed that the AR method could memorise 20 per cent more words than the traditional method. But I was later given some feedback by Dr. Jingjing Zhao from Shaanxi Normal University and Professor Xiaoli Ni from Xi’an Jiaotong University, who told me that my experiment had some flaws, such as targeting only short texts, and that this method would not work in large texts. They cautioned me against approaching the problem with an unprofessional intellectual background and attitude.

As a result, I changed my initial thinking and did a second intervention. I created a chat group called the Dyslexic Children’s Exchange Group. The purpose of this group is to provide a platform for parents of dyslexic children to communicate with each other, so that parents can discover the strengths of their children and nurture more possibilities for them. Not just academic achievements. I will regularly post information about proper understanding of dyslexia in the group. It started with 15 people and now there are more than 100. Gradually, these parents are also sharing and discussing dyslexia with each other. The feedback I have received from many parents has been positive. This is because they all lacked a platform where they could talk to each other before. 

Text and video do not easily give a direct sense of immersion, what natural real-time interaction like AR can bring is a deeper level of character immersion. This has therefore given rise to the third and final intervention project currently underway – Using AR technology to show the world as seen by children with dyslexia. I have spent a lot of time developing the AR project, using Unity 3D software to create visual models that aim to use AR to visually represent the textual world that dyslexic children see when they read books. This is to enable more parents to understand the pain and suffering of dyslexic children in a realistic way. Thus challenging their misconceptions about dyslexia. 

Conclusion 

During this year-long research journey, I have realized my potential to reach out to the world beyond my own intellectual boundaries and learn about the lack of awareness of dyslexia in Chinese society through various ways of research. I interviewed many children suffering from dyslexia and their parents and felt their inner struggle and uncertainty. I also attempted to communicate with professionals and stakeholders, and to conduct intervention tests.Although I deviated from my original goal of creating a tool to directly help children with dyslexia. This was because after feedback from experts, I realized that I was not capable of intervening in such a specialized area with my academic background. But I have since done many meaningful things, especially I have created a platform for parents of dyslexic children to communicate with each other, and I look forward to more people joining in and adding to the development of dyslexia in China. 

My journey is not over yet, I am continuing my next mission to present the world of dyslexics in AR way, and I want to do my best to change the prejudice of dyslexia in the eyes of Chinese parents. 

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 Longxue Xing, Yalei Li, Liping Jia, 2021. A Review of the Research on Chinese Developmental Dyslexia. Advances in Psychological Science, p. 1210-1219.

 Margaret J. Snowling,Charles Hulme, 2011. Interventions for children’s language and literacy difficulties. International Journal of Disorders of Language and Communication, p. 27-34.

 Wei Tongqi, Cao Hui, Bi Hong-Yan, Yang Yang. 2020. Writing deficits in developmental dyslexia and its neural mechanisms. Advances in Psychological Science, 28(1), p. 75-84.

 Mei Li, 2013. People.cn. [Online]

Available at: http://www.people.com.cn/24hour/n/2013/0917/c25408-22943852.html

 LI Huan，Long Yanlin, 2019. Status Quo and Prospects of Intervention Ｒesearch in Chinese Dyslexia in the Past Decade. Chinese Journal of Special Education , p. 7.

 Songlin Zhu，Qiong Wu, 2014. Analysis of the application of augmented reality in paper publishing and the barriers to its development. Technology & Publishing, p. 122-125.