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是根本不同的。与儿童不同，成人第二语言(L2)学习者对他们的新语言了解有限，但可能已经拥有流利的第一语言(L1)阅读技能。这些阅读技能根据拼法的特点而发展不同，例如语音信息量和书写单位-口语单位对应的一致性。有充分的证据表明，母语正字法经验对二语阅读技能有传递和影响作用，但对于不同母语类型的学习者在不同任务中的影响范围还不清楚。本论文的总体目标是了解学习者的母语正字法对基本阅读技能的影响以及这些技能是如何相互联系的。在前两项研究中，将从母语为法语、希伯来语和普通话的人那里收集一套与语言和识字相关的技能的行为数据。这些语言被选择来代表三种主要的拼写类型：法语，一种字母表；希伯来语，一种基于辅音的ABJAD，通常不写元音；以及普通话，一种基于字符的形态音节。参与者将完成语音意识、拼写知识、单词识别、假词解码、阅读理解和英语水平的测量。研究的主要目的是调查母语对说话者具有最大意识的语音单位大小的影响，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，以及它们如何对单词识别和更广泛的阅读能力做出不同的贡献。在第三项研究中，将收集成年ESL课堂学习者的识字技能数据，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陌生单词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.