Focusing on a Subset of Scripts Enhances the Learning Efficiency of Second Language Writing System

Memorizing the whole set of graphemes is generally accepted as the first step of learning a phonogramic language. However, it is demanding for L2 learners to familiarize the whole inventory of graphemes in advance if the language has a relatively large inventory size. We propose that learning a subset of graphemes would largely enhance the learning efficiency by reducing the memory burden. With homophony minimized, effort of acquiring vocabulary in elementary stage can be greatly reduced. In this paper, the writing system of Thai is used to illustrate the main idea. Besides, the method may also be extendable to Japanese and Korean, which grapheme inventory sizes