Doctoral dissertation research: First language impacts on second language component reading skills, word skills, and overall reading achievement

学习阅读第二语言与学习阅读第一语言有着本质的不同。与儿童不同，成人第二语言（L2）学习者对新语言的知识有限，但可能已经具备流利的第一语言（L1）阅读技能。这些阅读技能的发展取决于正字法的特点，如语音信息的数量和书面单位与口语单位对应关系的一致性。有很好的证据表明，L1正字法的经验转让和影响L2识字技能，但这些影响的范围内，在不同的任务，从不同的L1类型的学习者，还没有很好地understood.本论文项目的总体目标是了解的影响，学习者的L1正字法的基本识字技能和这些技能是如何相互关联的。 在前两项研究中，将从母语为法语、希伯来语和普通话的人中收集一组语言和识字相关技能的行为数据。这些语言被选为代表三种主要的正字法类型：法语，字母表;希伯来语，基于辅音的abjad，其中元音通常不写;和普通话，基于字符的形态音节。参与者将完成语音意识，正字法知识，单词识别，假词解码，阅读理解和英语水平的测量。 本研究的主要目的是探讨母语对语音单位大小的影响，在语音单位大小上说话人具有最大的意识，以及他们的词汇和亚词汇正字法知识的程度。 另一个目标是探索这些技能之间的相互关系，以及它们如何不同地有助于单词识别和更一般的阅读能力。在第三项研究中，将从成人ESL课堂学习者中收集有关识字技能的数据，以在课堂环境中而不是在实验室中检查这些技能，并测试旨在提高学生处理不熟悉单词的策略的教学干预的有效性。

Learning to read a second language is fundamentally different from learning to read a first language. Unlike children, adult second language (L2) learners have limited knowledge of their new language but may already have fluent reading skills in their first language (L1). These reading skills develop differently based on characteristics of the orthography, such as the amount of phonetic information and the consistency of the written unit-spoken unit correspondences. Good evidence exists that L1 orthography experience transfers and impacts L2 literacy skills, but the range of these effects, in different tasks for learners from different L1 types, are not well understood.The overall goal of this dissertation project is to understand the influence that a learner's L1 orthography has on basic literacy skills and on how these skills are interrelated. In the first two studies, behavioral data will be collected on a set of language and literacy-related skills from native French, Hebrew, and Mandarin speakers. These languages were selected to represent three major orthography types: French, an alphabet; Hebrew, a consonant-based abjad, in which vowels are generally not written; and Mandarin, a character-based morphosyllabary. Participants will complete measures of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, word recognition, pseudoword decoding, reading comprehension, and English proficiency. The primary goal is to investigate the impact that L1 has on the phonological unit size at which speakers have greatest awareness, and the extent of their lexical and sublexical orthographic knowledge. Another goal is to explore the interrelations among these skills and how they differentially contribute to word recognition and more general reading ability. In the third study, data will be collected on literacy skills from adult ESL classroom learners to examine these skills in a classroom setting, rather than in a laboratory, and to test the effectiveness of an instructional intervention designed to boost students' strategies for dealing with unfamiliar words.