She was not born with learning disabilities! Developing young children's reading abilities through Children's High Sense of Chinese Characters Class in Taiwan.

Literacy is the cornerstone of reading (Cagelka & Berdine, 1991; Perfetti, 1986). For those students who were falling behind in core academic areas, remedial education was believed to assist them to achieve expected competencies in academic skills such as Chinese literacy. However, there was an instructional program -- Children's High Sense of Chinese Characters Class (CHSCC) -- designed for young students who had identified deficiencies in reading. CHSCC invited young children to interpret ancient Chinese text word, through which children learned parallel font type or pronunciation of Chinese characters. It was a transformation in Chinese language teaching and learning in Taiwan.

This article focused on a second grade young girl in a rural area. The girl was regarded as an intellectual disability with learning problem. For example, she was slow to general Chinese sound rhyme, however after the CHSCC learning, this girl was able to read Chinese characters without the help of phonetic symbols. Later on, the researcher invited this girl to read "Hooray for Fish" a book by Lucy Cousins, and found that she was not born with an intellectual disability. She was very quiet and passive and lacking of self-esteem in reading. CHSCC helped her to build self-confidence. She understood the meaning of the picture book, summary the book, and expressed the grammar of the language well.