Learning to Read Across Languages

Cross-Linguistic Relationships in First- and Second-Language Literacy Development

Keiko Koda, Annette M. Zehler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135600334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book systematically examines how learning to read occurs in diverse languages, and in so doing, explores how literacy is learned in a second language by learners who have achieved at least basic reading skills in their first language. As a consequence of rapid globalization, such learners are a large and growing segment of the school population worldwide, and an increasing number of schools are challenged by learners from a wide variety of languages, and with distinct prior literacy experiences. To succeed academically these learners must develop second-language literacy skills, yet little is known about the ways in which they learn to read in their first languages, and even less about how the specific nature and level of their first-language literacy affects second-language reading development.

This volume provides detailed descriptions of five typologically diverse languages and their writing systems, and offers comparisons of learning-to-read experiences in these languages. Specifically, it addresses the requisite competencies in learning to read in each of the languages, how language and writing system properties affect the way children learn to read, and the extent and ways in which literacy learning experience in one language can play a role in subsequent reading development in another. Both common and distinct aspects of literacy learning experiences across languages are identified, thus establishing a basis for determining which skills are available for transfer in second-language reading development.

Learning to Read Across Languages is intended for researchers and advanced students in the areas of second-language learning, psycholinguistics, literacy, bilingualism, and cross-linguistic issues in language processing.

1
Introduction

Conceptualizing reading universals, cross-linguistic variations, and second language literacy development

Keiko Koda and Annette M. Zehler

Reading is an essential component of academic learning, as well as a foundation for becoming an informed member of the broader community. Failure to achieve adequate reading proficiency denies students access to the essential tool for further learning. Students suffer academically when they are unable to make the transition from oral language skills to achieving basic decoding competence and comprehending various types of texts. They increasingly fall behind in their schooling, and are at greater risk of dropping out. Sadly, this has been the case with too many children in today’s schools, and understandably there has been concern when students struggle in learning to read.

These concerns take on increasing complexity among the growing number of language-minority students who receive formal instruction in a language other than their mother tongue. In 2002, there were approximately four million English language learners in grades K-12, constituting roughly 8.4 percent of the estimated total student population. While two-thirds of these students are in the lower elementary grades, the remaining third are in middle and high schools (Kindler, 2002). As we seek ways to promote skilled readers, it is extremely important to address the needs of these students.

Given this end, the volume’s primary objective is to explore principled approaches examining the impacts of prior literacy experience on reading development in a second language. It provides theoretical perspectives through which such impacts are conceptualized, and then presents sequential analyses as the methodological foundation for identifying variations in literacy experience in typologically diverse languages. Collectively, the analyses make it possible to examine the specific ways in which literacy skills developed in one language alter reading development in another.

The problem

A recent large-scale synthesis on literacy research involving language-minority students (August & Shanahan, 2006) concludes that literacy in the first language is a potential facilitator in literacy development in a second language. However, many researchers have acknowledged that much remains to be explored as to the relationship between first- and second-language learning to read (August & Hakuta, 1998; Snow et al., 1998). Although it has long been recognized that those already literate in one language progress faster and achieve higher levels in second-language reading development (e.g. Bernhardt, 2003), little is known about the specific ways literacy experience in one language facilitates reading development in another. Obviously, there is a pressing need for clarifying the precise nature of the cross-linguistic relationship in literacy development in bilingual students.

The issues at hand, however, are extremely complex, because second-language literacy encompasses a broad range of learners, including those of different ages, and with diverse first-language backgrounds. Probing the fundamental question of how literacy in one language affects reading development in another requires an extensive consideration of the many disparate circumstances in which literacy is learned in both first and second languages. The investigations must, therefore, include learners with different first languages as well as those at different stages of reading acquisition in those languages.

These complexities are further compounded by the distance between the languages involved, since distance predicts how similar (or different) literacy learning experiences in the two languages will be. The distance thus determines, in considerable part, to what degree second-language learning-to-read will be facilitated by prior literacy experience through cross-language transfer. Less facilitation can be expected to occur when the two languages are distinct than when the two are related. In the absence of coherent frameworks, the distance effects, although considerably discussed on a speculative basis, remain to be adequately explained.

The learning context is another factor adding complexity to the cross-linguistic relationship in literacy development. Since literacy learning does not occur in a vacuum, the context in which literacy has been learned in the first language must be taken into account. To illustrate, Arabic-speaking children learn to speak a local dialect at home, and then learn Modern Standard Arabic for both oral and written communication in school. For these children, an additional language—for example, English as a foreign language—represents a second written language, and a third oral language. Another example can be drawn from Chinese heritage-language learners in the U.S. These children learn to speak Chinese at home, receive primary literacy instruction in English in school, and pursue additional literacy in Chinese in a weekend school. For them, their second oral language (English) represents a first written language, and their first oral language (Chinese) is a second written language. Finally, there are students who enter schools in a host country without prior schooling experience and with only very rudimentary, if any, reading skills in their first language.

Obviously, circumstances of “prior literacy” learning differ considerably among second-language learners and the reading skills acquired through “prior literacy” vary accordingly. Hence, these circumstances, and variations therein, must be adequately described and understood because they explain, at least in part, the different developmental paths needed in learning to read in a second language among diverse groups of learners.

Given the complexity of the issues to be addressed, it is perhaps not surprising that there is only a limited body of research to draw upon. As will be further noted in several of the chapters in the volume, much of the research on second-language reading has focused on alphabetic first- and second-languages, and on early elementary grade students. Research involving middle- and high-school students to date remains heavily restricted (Zehler et al., 2003). Also, many of the studies on record have examined aggregated groups of students from several different first languages, and thus do not isolate the impacts of prior literacy experience stemming from a particular first language or a particular learning context.

As the first step in initiating systematic investigations of the cross-linguistic relationship in second-language literacy development, we have laid out a set of fundamental questions to guide subsequent conceptualizations:

• Do reading skills developed in diverse first languages differ from one another?

• If so, in what ways do they differ?

• Which specific skills transfer across languages?

• Under what conditions does transfer occur?

• What factors affect cross-language reading skills transfer?

• To what extent, and in what ways, do transferred first-language competencies affect learning to read in a second language?

• Do the transferred competencies compensate in any way for underdeveloped linguistic knowledge in second-language reading development?

• If, in fact, transferred first-language competencies play a role in learning to read in a second language, what are the implications of the first-language influences for instructional practice?

In this volume, we attempt to explore a principled approach to addressing these questions, first, by identifying the universal and language-specific constraints on learning to read in typologically diverse languages, and second, by clarifying how literacy competencies developed in one language are incorporated in learning to read in another. Based on these conceptualizations, we outline procedures for analyzing the properties of five languages and their writing systems to identify the competencies shaped through literacy experience in these languages, and to examine how these competencies can be applied to reading acquisition in another language.

The scope of the analyses

Reading, as a complex cognitive process, involves a number of operations, each of which requires diverse sub-skills for its execution. At the same time, reading development, as a socially constructed pursuit, is shaped and constrained by everyday experiences of members in a particular socio-cultural community. Inevitably, theories of reading acquisition must incorporate the broad range of competencies to be acquired, as well as the varied social contexts in which literacy is learned. Given such diversity in both the competencies involved and the contextual factors affecting their acquisition, no single theory can be all encompassing. It is imperative, therefore, that the scope of investigation be clarified at the outset.

First, in this volume, reading is viewed as a psycholinguistic construct, and as such, the requisites for its acquisition are conceptualized as the cognitive and linguistic resources needed for print information extraction (decoding) and for text meaning construction (comprehension). The psycholinguistic orientation simply reflects the expertise of the contributing authors and in no way intends to discredit other perspectives and approaches.

Second, metalinguistic awareness—the ability to identify, analyze, and manipulate language forms—is the primary focus in the analyses in this volume. Here again, this privilege by no means implies that metalinguistic awareness is the only construct contributing to learning to read or pertaining to cross-language transfer. The restricted scope is necessary simply because the exploration is still in its infancy, seeking empirical procedures for tracking uses of particular skills across languages.

Serious attention is also given to decoding development. Since decoding is the process of extracting linguistic information from print, it benefits directly from metalinguistic awareness. Accordingly, the extent to which first-language metalinguistic awareness relates to variations—both qualitative and quantitative—in second-language, decoding can be taken as an index of an impact stemming from prior literacy experience, thereby serving as a basis for estimating such an impact on second-language learning to read. Insofar as decoding is a critical first step in literacy acquisition, it is hoped that the current exploration will be extended to other reading sub-skills—comprehension skills, in particular—in future investigations.

The conceptual frameworks

Reading is a multi-dimensional pursuit, involving a large number of sub-component processes. The complexity increases exponentially in second-language reading since virtually all of its operations involve two, or more, languages. To understand how children learn to...

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Theoretical underpinnings
• Part II Languages, writing systems and learning to read
• Index