Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.988109
Min Wang, L. Verhoeven
In this age of globalisation, the need for communication in a second or foreign language has dramatically increased. Second language (L2) reading and literacy education has become one of the most important components of our educational system. Learning to read is essentially learning to map between phonological, orthographic and semantic information in written words. The key development in learning to read is the improvement of the qualities of orthographic, phonological and semantic representations of given words, and learning to read in L2 is no exception. This Special Issue is focused on one important specific aspect of L2 reading, namely, reading morphologically complex L2 words. Morphology represents an important interface between phonology, orthography and semantics. Previous L2 reading research has been largely devoted to phonological processes in reading single-morpheme words. Relatively fewer studies have investigated reading of morphologically complex words in L2. How morphologically complex words are represented and processed has been one of the central questions in first language (L1) reading literature. Recent research has shown support for interactive models that propose a direct lexical route involving access to full-form representations of the complex words along with a parsing route that allows decomposition of constituent morphemes. According to those interactive models, the mental lexicon is the storehouse for both complex words and their constituent morphemes. The meaning of a complex word can be accessed either directly or by an analysis of the meanings of its constituent morphemes. The analysis approach is affected by the features of an individual complex word and its constituent morphemes, such as frequency of both the whole word and its constituent morphemes and semantic transparency in terms of the relation between the whole word and its constituent morphemes. Individual differences in reading skill have recently been shown to play a role in the reliance of morpho-orthographic information in reading. Research to date has focused heavily on reading morphologically complex words in monolingual populations, while less is known about reading complex words by L2 readers, both in developing children and adults. Within the very limited literature on L2 reading of morphologically complex words, there is some debate on whether L2 learners are able to represent and process morphological information as much as L1 readers.
{"title":"Introduction to this special issue: Reading morphologically complex words in a second language","authors":"Min Wang, L. Verhoeven","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.988109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.988109","url":null,"abstract":"In this age of globalisation, the need for communication in a second or foreign language has dramatically increased. Second language (L2) reading and literacy education has become one of the most important components of our educational system. Learning to read is essentially learning to map between phonological, orthographic and semantic information in written words. The key development in learning to read is the improvement of the qualities of orthographic, phonological and semantic representations of given words, and learning to read in L2 is no exception. This Special Issue is focused on one important specific aspect of L2 reading, namely, reading morphologically complex L2 words. Morphology represents an important interface between phonology, orthography and semantics. Previous L2 reading research has been largely devoted to phonological processes in reading single-morpheme words. Relatively fewer studies have investigated reading of morphologically complex words in L2. How morphologically complex words are represented and processed has been one of the central questions in first language (L1) reading literature. Recent research has shown support for interactive models that propose a direct lexical route involving access to full-form representations of the complex words along with a parsing route that allows decomposition of constituent morphemes. According to those interactive models, the mental lexicon is the storehouse for both complex words and their constituent morphemes. The meaning of a complex word can be accessed either directly or by an analysis of the meanings of its constituent morphemes. The analysis approach is affected by the features of an individual complex word and its constituent morphemes, such as frequency of both the whole word and its constituent morphemes and semantic transparency in terms of the relation between the whole word and its constituent morphemes. Individual differences in reading skill have recently been shown to play a role in the reliance of morpho-orthographic information in reading. Research to date has focused heavily on reading morphologically complex words in monolingual populations, while less is known about reading complex words by L2 readers, both in developing children and adults. Within the very limited literature on L2 reading of morphologically complex words, there is some debate on whether L2 learners are able to represent and process morphological information as much as L1 readers.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"129 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.988109","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.943645
Kathleen Hipfner-Boucher, Katie Lam, Xi Chen, S. Deacon
The present study investigated factors influencing the ability to decompose multimorphemic words in French in non-francophone children educated in French. In particular, we focused on the effects of two word features: English-French cognate status and base frequency. We also examined the effect of child language background (English first language (EL1) versus English second language (ELL)) on performance. In two related studies, children in grades 1 to 3 completed a translation task requiring them to match morphologically complex words in French and English. Target words were manipulated with respect to cognate status and base frequency. Overall, performance was found to improve over time and to be influenced by cognate status and word frequency. Across all grades, EL1 and ELL children were comparable on task performance. Taken together, these results suggest that French immersion students' ability to deconstruct words and extract morphemes in French is influenced by the presence of cognates, as well as base frequency.
{"title":"Exploring the effects of word features on French immersion children's ability to deconstruct morphologically complex words","authors":"Kathleen Hipfner-Boucher, Katie Lam, Xi Chen, S. Deacon","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.943645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.943645","url":null,"abstract":"The present study investigated factors influencing the ability to decompose multimorphemic words in French in non-francophone children educated in French. In particular, we focused on the effects of two word features: English-French cognate status and base frequency. We also examined the effect of child language background (English first language (EL1) versus English second language (ELL)) on performance. In two related studies, children in grades 1 to 3 completed a translation task requiring them to match morphologically complex words in French and English. Target words were manipulated with respect to cognate status and base frequency. Overall, performance was found to improve over time and to be influenced by cognate status and word frequency. Across all grades, EL1 and ELL children were comparable on task performance. Taken together, these results suggest that French immersion students' ability to deconstruct words and extract morphemes in French is influenced by the presence of cognates, as well as base frequency.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"157 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.943645","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.976165
S. Casalis, Eva Commissaire, Lynne G. Duncan
Little is yet known about how L2 learners process morphology during visual word recognition. Two points of view may be contrasted: the first one suggests that L2 learners, as less proficient speakers, may be less sensitive to the computational aspects of word processing such as the morphological structure of complex words, relying more on lexical information; whereas, the second one suggests that word processing is constrained mainly by linguistic aspects, making L2 learners as sensitive to word structure as native speakers. While previous studies have mainly focused on proficient to highly proficient L2 speakers, the present study compared L2 learners of low proficiency with those of intermediate to high levels of proficiency. The role of morphological structure in word recognition and pseudoword processing was examined by manipulating the presence of embedded words and suffixes in items presented for L2 lexical decision. Contrasting patterns in L2 word recognition were observed between groups as the low-proficiency group was more sensitive to the presence of an embedded word than the higher proficiency group in both accuracy and speed. However, pseudowords made up of an embedded word and suffix were significantly more likely to be wrongly accepted as words than other pseudowords by both groups. Furthermore, correct rejection of these items as words induced longer latencies in both groups, indicating a morphological analysis of these pseudowords. Together, the results show that L2 learners, including those who are low in proficiency, are sensitive to the morphological structure of written L2 words.
{"title":"Sensitivity to morpheme units in English as L2 word recognition","authors":"S. Casalis, Eva Commissaire, Lynne G. Duncan","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.976165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.976165","url":null,"abstract":"Little is yet known about how L2 learners process morphology during visual word recognition. Two points of view may be contrasted: the first one suggests that L2 learners, as less proficient speakers, may be less sensitive to the computational aspects of word processing such as the morphological structure of complex words, relying more on lexical information; whereas, the second one suggests that word processing is constrained mainly by linguistic aspects, making L2 learners as sensitive to word structure as native speakers. While previous studies have mainly focused on proficient to highly proficient L2 speakers, the present study compared L2 learners of low proficiency with those of intermediate to high levels of proficiency. The role of morphological structure in word recognition and pseudoword processing was examined by manipulating the presence of embedded words and suffixes in items presented for L2 lexical decision. Contrasting patterns in L2 word recognition were observed between groups as the low-proficiency group was more sensitive to the presence of an embedded word than the higher proficiency group in both accuracy and speed. However, pseudowords made up of an embedded word and suffix were significantly more likely to be wrongly accepted as words than other pseudowords by both groups. Furthermore, correct rejection of these items as words induced longer latencies in both groups, indicating a morphological analysis of these pseudowords. Together, the results show that L2 learners, including those who are low in proficiency, are sensitive to the morphological structure of written L2 words.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"186 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.976165","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-01DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.924386
Rebecca Treiman, Kevin Mulqueeny, Brett Kessler
Children who are knowledgeable about the basic properties of writing when formal literacy instruction begins are better prepared to benefit from that instruction than children who know less about this topic. In the present study, we examined U.S. preschoolers' knowledge about one aspect of writing: its spatial arrangement. Our participants, who had a mean age of 4 years, 2 months and who could not read any words in a list of simple words, were significantly above the level of chance at determining that horizontally arranged strings of letters are more like the writing in books than are letters with vertical, diagonal, or scattered arrangements. Contrary to the theory that children learn about the characteristics of writing that hold true in all writing systems before they learn about the characteristics that are specific to their own writing system, young children did not show a priority for vertical arrangements. The results are more consistent with the hypothesis that preschoolers apply their statistical learning skills to the spatial layout of writing.
{"title":"Young children's knowledge about the spatial layout of writing.","authors":"Rebecca Treiman, Kevin Mulqueeny, Brett Kessler","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.924386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.924386","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Children who are knowledgeable about the basic properties of writing when formal literacy instruction begins are better prepared to benefit from that instruction than children who know less about this topic. In the present study, we examined U.S. preschoolers' knowledge about one aspect of writing: its spatial arrangement. Our participants, who had a mean age of 4 years, 2 months and who could not read any words in a list of simple words, were significantly above the level of chance at determining that horizontally arranged strings of letters are more like the writing in books than are letters with vertical, diagonal, or scattered arrangements. Contrary to the theory that children learn about the characteristics of writing that hold true in all writing systems before they learn about the characteristics that are specific to their own writing system, young children did not show a priority for vertical arrangements. The results are more consistent with the hypothesis that preschoolers apply their statistical learning skills to the spatial layout of writing.</p>","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 2","pages":"235-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.924386","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34067993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2015.998443
M. Young-Scholten
This Special Issue concerns a special population of second-language learners: post-puberty second-language (L2) learners who are learning to read and write for the first time in their lives, in the second language they are in the process of acquiring. They are among the roughly 781 million adult illiterates worldwide (UNESCO, 2014), and among those who emigrate from politically instable and/or impoverished regions of the world to highly literate post-industrialised societies. Theirs is a unique learning situation. Children learning to read in their home language begin with a language they know. They know the phonology, morphology and syntax of that language, and they know most if not all of the words they come across in reading materials designed for them. Their linguistic competence confers a range of advantages at the initial stages of reading. They are able to develop metalinguistic knowledge and skills to facilitate learning to read based on their linguistic competence. Attempts to guess words can be based on predictions of the next consonant in a cluster or of a possible word following a transitive verb. Much has been written about children’s reading development. Much has also been written about the development of reading by second-language learners, including those learning to read in a writing system different from their native language (Koda, 2005). The older learners studied are invariably educated and can already read and write in their native language. The younger learners studied may be foreign language learners in school or immigrant children who, like their older siblings and parents, need to learn to read in a language different from their home language. Here, too, there is a good amount of research (e.g., Gersten & Geva, 2003; Grigorenko & Takanishi, 2009). Older uneducated and low-educated L2 learners have long been neglected by researchers, despite the fact that more now fit the profile of the uninstructed migrant workers in northern Europe who in the 1970s and 1980s attracted considerable research attention (see Young-Scholten, 2013). The amount of research on the language and literacy development of older non-/low-educated L2 learners is surprisingly small. Increased basic research on both the internal and external factors which correlate with language and literacy success for these severely disadvantaged adults would yield evidence on which to
{"title":"Who are adolescents and adults who develop literacy for the first time in an L2, and why are they of research interest?","authors":"M. Young-Scholten","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2015.998443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2015.998443","url":null,"abstract":"This Special Issue concerns a special population of second-language learners: post-puberty second-language (L2) learners who are learning to read and write for the first time in their lives, in the second language they are in the process of acquiring. They are among the roughly 781 million adult illiterates worldwide (UNESCO, 2014), and among those who emigrate from politically instable and/or impoverished regions of the world to highly literate post-industrialised societies. Theirs is a unique learning situation. Children learning to read in their home language begin with a language they know. They know the phonology, morphology and syntax of that language, and they know most if not all of the words they come across in reading materials designed for them. Their linguistic competence confers a range of advantages at the initial stages of reading. They are able to develop metalinguistic knowledge and skills to facilitate learning to read based on their linguistic competence. Attempts to guess words can be based on predictions of the next consonant in a cluster or of a possible word following a transitive verb. Much has been written about children’s reading development. Much has also been written about the development of reading by second-language learners, including those learning to read in a writing system different from their native language (Koda, 2005). The older learners studied are invariably educated and can already read and write in their native language. The younger learners studied may be foreign language learners in school or immigrant children who, like their older siblings and parents, need to learn to read in a language different from their home language. Here, too, there is a good amount of research (e.g., Gersten & Geva, 2003; Grigorenko & Takanishi, 2009). Older uneducated and low-educated L2 learners have long been neglected by researchers, despite the fact that more now fit the profile of the uninstructed migrant workers in northern Europe who in the 1970s and 1980s attracted considerable research attention (see Young-Scholten, 2013). The amount of research on the language and literacy development of older non-/low-educated L2 learners is surprisingly small. Increased basic research on both the internal and external factors which correlate with language and literacy success for these severely disadvantaged adults would yield evidence on which to","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"1 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2015.998443","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.943148
T. Tammelin-Laine, Maisa Martin
Learning to read in an orthographically very shallow language may seem easy. However, for adults who are non-literate in their first language (L1), have no experience of formal education, and have to acquire literacy in a new language (L2), learning to read at all can be a formidable task. In this article, the results of a case study of the outcome of the first 10 months of Finnish literacy training for five immigrant women (24–45 years of age) are presented. Relationships are sought between the participants' achieved reading skills, their oral receptive vocabulary, their knowledge of letters, their phonological working memory and their visual memory. The results of the study show that even when grapheme-phoneme correspondences are quite regular, mere knowledge of the letters is not enough to trigger their ability to blend sounds. Vocabulary skills are necessary for functional reading but may be difficult to acquire if the phonological working memory is poor. Deficiencies in learners' mental representations of word patterns make it difficult for them to connect strings of letters to words. A good visual memory may help with vocabulary acquisition but this too first requires cracking the alphabetic code. The main conclusion of this first study of Finnish L2 literacy acquisition by non-literate adults is that multiple pedagogical approaches are required to accommodate the needs of these learners.
{"title":"The simultaneous development of receptive skills in an orthographically transparent second language","authors":"T. Tammelin-Laine, Maisa Martin","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.943148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.943148","url":null,"abstract":"Learning to read in an orthographically very shallow language may seem easy. However, for adults who are non-literate in their first language (L1), have no experience of formal education, and have to acquire literacy in a new language (L2), learning to read at all can be a formidable task. In this article, the results of a case study of the outcome of the first 10 months of Finnish literacy training for five immigrant women (24–45 years of age) are presented. Relationships are sought between the participants' achieved reading skills, their oral receptive vocabulary, their knowledge of letters, their phonological working memory and their visual memory. The results of the study show that even when grapheme-phoneme correspondences are quite regular, mere knowledge of the letters is not enough to trigger their ability to blend sounds. Vocabulary skills are necessary for functional reading but may be difficult to acquire if the phonological working memory is poor. Deficiencies in learners' mental representations of word patterns make it difficult for them to connect strings of letters to words. A good visual memory may help with vocabulary acquisition but this too first requires cracking the alphabetic code. The main conclusion of this first study of Finnish L2 literacy acquisition by non-literate adults is that multiple pedagogical approaches are required to accommodate the needs of these learners.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"39 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.943148","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.943150
Sinéad McCausland, J. Kingston, F. Lyddy
Short Message Service (SMS) messaging is associated with a variety of ‘textisms’, shortened words and other nonstandard spellings. Two such shortcuts, orthographic (e.g., deleting vowels) and phonological (e.g., sound-based respellings) abbreviations, have been associated with negative effects on reading in adults. The current study used eye tracking to investigate reading of English SMS messages with and without such shortcuts. Thirty young adults read sentences containing phonological, orthographic or mixed textisms, along with standard English sentences. Reading time, average fixation duration and total fixation count were measured. Sentences in standard English were associated with significantly faster reading times compared to the three textism conditions, with no difference between the textism types. Fewer fixations were made on standard English sentences and on sentences with phonological textisms. There was no association between the reading measures and participants' use of textisms, texting frequency or keypad preference. Although the processing cost was modest, the results support the view that sentences with texting shortcuts are harder to read than standard sentences in English.
{"title":"Processing costs when reading short message service shortcuts: An eye-tracking study","authors":"Sinéad McCausland, J. Kingston, F. Lyddy","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.943150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.943150","url":null,"abstract":"Short Message Service (SMS) messaging is associated with a variety of ‘textisms’, shortened words and other nonstandard spellings. Two such shortcuts, orthographic (e.g., deleting vowels) and phonological (e.g., sound-based respellings) abbreviations, have been associated with negative effects on reading in adults. The current study used eye tracking to investigate reading of English SMS messages with and without such shortcuts. Thirty young adults read sentences containing phonological, orthographic or mixed textisms, along with standard English sentences. Reading time, average fixation duration and total fixation count were measured. Sentences in standard English were associated with significantly faster reading times compared to the three textism conditions, with no difference between the textism types. Fewer fixations were made on standard English sentences and on sentences with phonological textisms. There was no association between the reading measures and participants' use of textisms, texting frequency or keypad preference. Although the processing cost was modest, the results support the view that sentences with texting shortcuts are harder to read than standard sentences in English.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"107 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.943150","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.898574
A. Stavans
Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the world. This type of input (albeit visual only) may propel literacy awareness, integration and cognitive assimilation of different writing and notational systems even before schooling. This study explores quantitatively and qualitatively the ways in which young multilingual children understand and interpret the principles underlying different writing systems. The focus is to compare how bilingual and monolingual children judge ‘readable and non-readable’ representations which are alphabetic or non-alphabetic (single, other or mixed); and whether readable strings comply with a qualitative and quantitative condition assigned to the string of signs presented. There are similarities as well as differences in the distinction as ‘readable’ between alphabetic and non-alphabetic notations among bilingual Ethiopian children and monolingual non-Ethiopian children who are pre-readers. Both groups regard as ‘readable’ sequences that contain varied and multiple combinations of alphabetic signs. There are revealing differences between the groups as to the quantity of signs in the sequence and whether it comes from a single, familiar or mixed alphabet. The Ethiopian bilingual children are more inclined to regard different alphabetic systems—whether they combine signs from within a single alphabet or from multiple alphabets—and tend to ‘detect’ them as ‘readable’ more so than non-Ethiopian monolinguals.
{"title":"Monolingual and multilingual discrimination of written sequences' readability","authors":"A. Stavans","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.898574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.898574","url":null,"abstract":"Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the world. This type of input (albeit visual only) may propel literacy awareness, integration and cognitive assimilation of different writing and notational systems even before schooling. This study explores quantitatively and qualitatively the ways in which young multilingual children understand and interpret the principles underlying different writing systems. The focus is to compare how bilingual and monolingual children judge ‘readable and non-readable’ representations which are alphabetic or non-alphabetic (single, other or mixed); and whether readable strings comply with a qualitative and quantitative condition assigned to the string of signs presented. There are similarities as well as differences in the distinction as ‘readable’ between alphabetic and non-alphabetic notations among bilingual Ethiopian children and monolingual non-Ethiopian children who are pre-readers. Both groups regard as ‘readable’ sequences that contain varied and multiple combinations of alphabetic signs. There are revealing differences between the groups as to the quantity of signs in the sequence and whether it comes from a single, familiar or mixed alphabet. The Ethiopian bilingual children are more inclined to regard different alphabetic systems—whether they combine signs from within a single alphabet or from multiple alphabets—and tend to ‘detect’ them as ‘readable’ more so than non-Ethiopian monolinguals.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"108 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.898574","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.943149
J. Kurvers
This article synthesises the findings of research on the acquisition of literacy by unschooled adult immigrants in the Netherlands. It addresses studies on three main topics: the metalinguistic skills of these adults, their development of word recognition and predictors of success in reading. The first study compared the conceptions of spoken and written language of 25 unschooled adults with those of young pre-reading children and low-educated adult readers. The study revealed that the metalinguistic skills of unschooled adults differed more from those of low-educated adult readers than from pre-reading children. The second was a case study which focused on the reading development of adult L2 beginners and revealed that their development of word-recognition skills confirms stage models of beginning reading in which acquiring the alphabetical principle is a key step. In the third study, the literacy skills of roughly 300 adult L2 literacy students were assessed and related to their background characteristics and to instructional practices. The study revealed considerable variation in success and time needed to develop reading. Success was related to student characteristics (age, prior education, attendance and contact with speakers of Dutch) and to instructional practices (time spent on small-group or individual work, use of multimedia and portfolio, and use of students’ first language as a resource).
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Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.987199
Nicole M. Pettitt, E. Tarone
This longitudinal study follows concurrent changes in a multilingual adult English learner's mastery of alphabetic print literacy and his oral learner language. The learner was 29 years old, and began to read and write an alphabetic script for the first time in English, his seventh language, during this study. Systematic observations were made of both his development of specific literacy skills and specific structures in his oral English over the course of six months during one-to-one literacy tutoring sessions with the first author; these occurred one to two times each week. Mixed methods were used for collection of data, including learner observations, oral language tasks, interviews and review of relevant documents. Results document the learner's development of a set of specific literacy skills during the six-month study. Findings include: knowing the names of the letters of the alphabet seemed unrelated to his decoding ability; some syntactic elements of his oral production became more complex with increasing alphabetic literacy, while oral fluency, lexis and pragmatics did not appear to be related to development of alphabetic literacy.
{"title":"Following Roba: What happens when a low-educated adult immigrant learns to read","authors":"Nicole M. Pettitt, E. Tarone","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.987199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.987199","url":null,"abstract":"This longitudinal study follows concurrent changes in a multilingual adult English learner's mastery of alphabetic print literacy and his oral learner language. The learner was 29 years old, and began to read and write an alphabetic script for the first time in English, his seventh language, during this study. Systematic observations were made of both his development of specific literacy skills and specific structures in his oral English over the course of six months during one-to-one literacy tutoring sessions with the first author; these occurred one to two times each week. Mixed methods were used for collection of data, including learner observations, oral language tasks, interviews and review of relevant documents. Results document the learner's development of a set of specific literacy skills during the six-month study. Findings include: knowing the names of the letters of the alphabet seemed unrelated to his decoding ability; some syntactic elements of his oral production became more complex with increasing alphabetic literacy, while oral fluency, lexis and pragmatics did not appear to be related to development of alphabetic literacy.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"20 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.987199","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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