Second Language Reading

Mechanisms of L2 Reading What linguistic knowledge is important in decoding? – Orthographic knowledge is important for decoding deep orthographies – Deficits in phonological knowledge are common in weak readers across a wide variety of languages – The vocabulary threshold for Independent text comprehension is 98% – At least half of the new words can be deduced by analyzing their morphological constituents

Mechanisms of L2 Reading What linguistic knowledge is important for text information building? – Syntactical knowledge plays a minor role in L1 reading but a major role in L2 reading – Knowledge of discourse markers is dependent on development constraints and substantial reading – Text structure knowledge correlates highly with amount of schooling and is trainable

Mechanisms of L2 Reading Linguistic knowledge in reader model building – Schema theory has been augmented by construction integration models that allow more bottom up input into the meaning construction process

Influences on reading progress Children learning to read must first recognize which language elements are encoded in the writing system and deduce how they are encoded The distinction between general mapping principles and mapping details provides a basis for conceptualizing precisely how prior literacy experience facilitates learning to read in a second language

Influences on reading progress Meta-linguistic awareness in reading acquisition is an abstract multidimensional construct that enables children to segment words into their constituents According to Grain Size Theory children gradually refine their sensitivity to the units of their language until they reach an effective grain size to decode the language

Effects of L1 literacy Cummins argues that cognitive academic language proficiency is best developed in the L1 and then transfer to the L2 L1 and L2 reading abilities are strongly correlated but traditional views were limited by seeing reading as a unitary construct L1 literacy experience has lasting impacts on L2 reading development and L2 text processing

BICS CALP

Effects of L2 literacy experience Limited control over the L2 short circuits are good reader’s system causing her to refer to weak reading strategies Second language proficiency relates more to second language reading than first language reading ability Low-proficiency learners rely heavily on local strategies to enhance are decoding performance while high proficiency learners generally do not

Interaction between L1 and L2 Once acquired in one language, PA provides substantial facilitation in learning to read in another language Orthographic distance affects are more localized than generally assumed L2 reading is guided by insights stemming from literacy experiences in the L1 and L2 but L2 print input appears to be a dominant force in shaping reading sub skills in that language