Offers a systemic and coherent overview of recent research findings and orientation on akshara, an hitherto underexplored orthography

Contains contributions by well-known researchers

Covers languages spoken by approximately one third of the world's population

Introduction; R. M. Joshi & Catherine McBride.- Indic Scripts: History, Typology, Study; Peter T. Daniels.- What is an Ak¿ara? Keerthi Ramanujan and Brendan Stuart Weekes.- Part II. Akshara Orthographies: A brief description.- Orthographic knowledge, reading and spelling development in Tamil: The first three years; Sonali Nag and Balambigai Narayanan.- Literacy acquisition in the Malayalam orthography: Cognitive/linguistic influences within a multilingual context; Mimisha Nesan, Amir Sadeghi and John Everatt.- Spelling Acquisition in Akshara and English; Pooja Nakamura, Joshi, R. M., & Ji, X.- Akshara processing in Telugu depends on syllabic and phonemic sensitivity: Preliminary evidence from normal hearing and hearing impaired children; Vasanta Duggirala.- Multiliteracy in Akshara and Alphabetic Orthographies: the case of Punjabi, Hindi and English learners in primary schools in Punjab; Seema Gautam, John Everatt, Amir Sadeghi, and Brigid McNeill.- Spelling and reading words in Bengali: The role of distributed phonology; Shruti Sircar and Sonali Nag.- Assamese phonology-orthography correlates with reference to learnability and literacy issues; Hemanga Dutta.- Reading and Writing Sinhala; M.A.D.K. Wijaythilake & R. Parrila.- Learning to Read and Write in Thai; Heather Winskel and Theeraporn Ratitamkul.- Part III. Assessment.- The Assessment of Emergent and Early Literacy Skills in the Akshara languages; Shaher Banu Vagh and Sonali Nag.- Dyslexia Assessment for Languages of India (DALI); Nandini Singh.- Part IV. Instruction.- Language-focused Instruction for Literacy Acquisition in Akshara-based Languages; Chandrika Mathur & Sonali Nag.- Challenges in learning Akshara orthographies for second language learners; Adeetee Bhide & Charles Perfetti.- Part V. Research Implications.- Learning to read in their heritage language: Hindi-Englisryh speakers reading two different orthographies; Amna Mirza and Alexandra Gottardo.- Cross-modal processing of orthography-phonology interface in Hindi-English bilinguals; Ramesh Kumar Mishra.- Language and Literacy Practices that Influence Bilingual and Bi-Literate Acquisition in L1 Kannada and L2 English in Bangalore, India; Sunaina Shenoy and Richard K. Wagner.