Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T04:18:16.165Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The impact of language on the relationships between phonological awareness and word reading in different orthographies: A test of the psycholinguistic grain size theory in bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2015

ALEXANDRA GOTTARDO ,
ADRIAN PASQUARELLA ,
XI CHEN  and
GLORIA RAMIREZ
ALEXANDRA GOTTARDO*
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
ADRIAN PASQUARELLA
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
XI CHEN
Affiliation:
OISE at University of Toronto
GLORIA RAMIREZ
Affiliation:
Thompson Rivers University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORREPONDENCE Alexandra Gottardo, Psychology Department, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5, Canada. E-mail: agottardo@wlu.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relationships among first language (L1) and second language (L2) phonological awareness and reading skills were examined in English L2 learners with a variety of L1s, specifically Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese (maximum N = 252). Longitudinal and concurrent relations between word reading and subcomponents of phonological awareness (i.e., syllable, onset-rime, phoneme, and, where applicable, tone awareness) were examined in kindergarten and first and second grades. The relationships between reading and specific subcomponents of phonological awareness were associated with the orthography being read, English or the L1. Phonological awareness subcomponents related to English reading were generally similar for the three English L2 groups, despite differences in the orthographies of learners’ native language. The findings support the psycholinguistic grain size theory with regard to links between phonological sensitivity and the sound–symbol correspondences used to read the specific languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , September 2016 , pp. 1083 - 1115
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alvarez, C. J., Carreiras, M., & Perea, M. (2004). Are syllables phonological units in visual word recognition? Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 427–452.Google Scholar
Alvarez, C. J., Carreiras, M., & Taft, M. (2001). Syllables and morphemes: Contrasting frequency effects in Spanish. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 545–555.Google Scholar
Anthony, J., & Lonigan, C. (2004). The nature of phonological awareness: Converging evidence from four studies of preschool and early grade school children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 43–55.Google Scholar
August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing literacy in second language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on language minority children and youth. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., Majumder, S., & Martin, M. M. (2003). Developing phonological awareness: Is there a bilingual advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 27–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, D. C., Sanchez-Casas, R. M., & Garcia-Albea, J. E. (1993). The status of the syllable in the perception of Spanish and English. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 197–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branum-Martin, L., Mehta, P. D., Fletcher, J. M., Carlson, C. D., Ortiz, A., Carlo, M., et al. (2006). Bilingual phonological awareness: Multilevel construct validation among Spanish-speaking kindergarteners in transitional bilingual education classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 170–181.Google Scholar
Branum-Martin, L., Tao, S., Garnaat, S., Bunta, F., & Francis, D. J. (2012). Meta-analysis of bilingual phonological awareness: Language, age, and psycholinguistic grain size. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 932–944.Google Scholar
Bus, A., & van IJzendoorn, M. (1999). Phonological awareness and early reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 403–414.Google Scholar
Caravolas, M. (2006). Refining the psycholinguistic grain size theory: Effects of phonotactic structure and task demands on the size of the phonological units accessed by young children. Developmental Science, 9, 445–447.Google Scholar
Caravolas, M., & Landerl, K. (2010). The influences of syllable structure and reading ability on the development of phoneme awareness: A longitudinal, cross-linguistic study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14, 464–484.Google Scholar
Caravolas, M., Lervåg, A., Defior, S., Málková, G. S., & Hulme, C. (2013). Different patterns, but equivalent predictors, of growth in reading in consistent and inconsistent orthographies. Psychological Science, 24, 1396–1407.Google Scholar
Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Is there a causal link from phonological awareness to success in learning to read? Cognition, 91, 77–111.Google Scholar
Chall, J. S. (1996). Learning to read: The great debate (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw–Hill.Google Scholar
Cisero, C. A., & Royer, J. M. (1995). The development and cross-language transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20, 275–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204–256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In Bialystok, E. (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp. 70–89). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeCara, B., & Goswami, U. (2003). Phonological neighbourhood density: Effects in a rhyme awareness task in five-year-old children. Journal of Child Language, 30, 695–710.Google Scholar
Defior, S., Martos, F., & Cary, L. (2002). Differences in reading acquisition development in two shallow orthographies: Portuguese and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 135–148.Google Scholar
Dunn, L., & Dunn, L. (1997). The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—III. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Durgunoglu, A. Y. (2002). Cross-linguistic transfer in literacy development and implications for language learners. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 189–204.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R. (2004). From phonemic differences to constraint rankings: Research on second language phonology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 513–549.Google Scholar
Ehri, L. C. (1992). Reconceptualizing the development of sight word reading and its relationship to recoding. In Gough, P. B., Ehri, L. C., & Treiman, R. (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 107–143). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. (1992). Speech learning in a second language. In Ferguson, C., Menn, L., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (Eds.), Phonological development: Models, research, and implications (pp. 565–604). Timonium, MD: York.Google Scholar
Francis, D., Carlo, M., August, D., Kenyon, D., Malabonga, V., Caglarcan, S., et al. (2001). Test of Phonological Processing in Spanish. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Frost, R., & Katz, L. (1992). Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning: Advances in psychology, 94. Oxford: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Geva, E., & Siegel, L. S. (2000). Orthographic and cognitive factors in the concurrent development of basic reading skills in two languages. Readind and Writing, 12, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geva, E., Wade-Woolley, L., & Shany, M. (1993). The concurrent development of spelling and decoding in two different orthographies. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 383–406.Google Scholar
Geva, E., & Wang, M. (2001). The development of basic reading skills in children: A cross-linguistic perspective. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 182–204.Google Scholar
Gottardo, A., & Grant, A. (2008). Defining bilingualism. Retrieved from http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca Google Scholar
Gottardo, A., & Mueller, J. (2009). Are first- and second-language factors related in predicting second-language reading comprehension? A study of Spanish speaking children acquiring English as a second language from first to second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 330.Google Scholar
Gottardo, A., Yan, B., Siegel, L. S., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2001). Factors related to English reading performance in children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 530–542.Google Scholar
Ho, C. S., & Bryant, P. (1997). Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese. Developmental Psychology, 33, 946–951.Google Scholar
Hoien, T., Lundberg, I., Stanovich, K. E., & Bjaalid, I. (1995). Components of phonological awareness. Reading and Writing, 7, 171–188.Google Scholar
Hulme, C., Hatcher, P. J., Nation, K., Brown, A., Adams, J., & Stuart, G. (2002). Phoneme awareness is a better predictor of early reading skill than onset-rime awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 2–28.Google Scholar
Hutzler, F., Ziegler, J. C., Perry, C., Wimmer, H., & Zorzi, M. (2004). Do current connectionist models accounts for reading development in different languages? Cognition, 91, 273–296.Google Scholar
Jared, D., Cormier, P., Levy, B. A., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2011). Early predictors of biliteracy development in children in French immersion: A 4-year longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 119–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiménez-González, J. E. (1997). A reading-level match study of phonemic processes underlying reading disabilities in a transparent orthography. Reading and Writing, 9, 23–40.Google Scholar
Kim, Y.-S. (2007). Phonological awareness and literacy skills in Korean: An examination of the unique role of body-coda units. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 67–93.Google Scholar
Kuo, L.-J. & Anderson, R. C. (2010). Beyond cross-language transfer: Reconceptualizing the impact of early bilingualism on phonological awareness. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14, 365–385.Google Scholar
Leong, C.-K., & Tamaoka, K. (1998). Cognitive processing of Chinese characters, words, sentences and Japanese kanji and kana: An introduction. Reading and Writing, 10, 155–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, C. N., & Thompson, S. A. (1977). The acquisition of tone in Mandarin-speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 4, 185–199.Google Scholar
Li, W., Anderson, R. C., Nagy, W., & Zhang, H. (2002). Facets of metalinguistic awareness that contribute to Chinese literacy. In Li, W., Gaffney, J. G., & Packard, J. L. (Eds.), Chinese children's reading acquisition (pp. 87–106). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Mann, V. A., & Foy, J. G. (2003). Phonological awareness, speech development, and letter knowledge in preschool children. Annals of Dyslexia, 53, 149–173.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang, C., & Ho, C. S. H. (2000). Developmental issues in Chinese children's character acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 50–55.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang, C., & Kail, R. K. (2002). Cross-cultural similarities in predictors of reading acquisition. Child Development, 73, 1392–1407.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang, C., Tong, X., Shu, H., Wong, A. M. Y., Leung, K., & Tardif, T. (2008). Syllable, phoneme, and tone: Psycholinguistic units in early Chinese and English word recognition. Scientific Studies of Reading, 12, 171–194.Google Scholar
Morais, J. (1991). Constraints on the developmental of phonological awareness. In Brady, S. A. & Shankweiler, D. P. (Eds.), Phonological processes in literacy. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nag, S., Caravolas, M., & Snowling, M. J. (2011). Beyond alphabetic processes: Literacy and its acquisition in alphasyllabic languages. Reading and Writing, 24, 615–622.Google Scholar
Nag, S., & Snowling, M. J. (2012). Reading in an alphasyllabary: Implications for a language universal theory of learning to read. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 404–423.Google Scholar
Naglieri, J. (1989). Matrix Analogies Test—Expanded Form. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A., & Liu, Y. (2005). Orthography to phonology and meaning: Comparisons across and within writing systems. Reading and Writing, 18, 193–210.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., & Tan, L. H. (2005). The lexical constituency model: Some implications of research on Chinese for general theories of reading. Psychological Review, 112, 43–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plaut, D., McClelland, J., Seidenberg, M., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychology Review, 103, 56–115.Google Scholar
Rapp, B. C. (1992). The nature of sublexical orthographic organization: The bigram trough hypothesis examined. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 33–53.Google Scholar
Schatschneider, C., Francis, D. J., Foorman, B. R., Fletcher, J. M., & Mehta, P. (1999). The dimensionality of phonological awareness: An application of item response theory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 439–449.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989). A distributed developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523–568.Google Scholar
Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Share, D. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584.Google Scholar
Shu, H., Anderson, R. C., & Wu, N. (2000). Phonetic awareness: Knowledge of orthography phonology relationships in the character acquisition of Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 56–62.Google Scholar
Shu, H., Peng, H., & McBride-Chang, C. (2008). Phonological awareness in young Chinese children. Developmental Science, 11, 171–181.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (1990). Concepts in developmental theories of reading skill: Cognitive resources, automaticity, and modularity. Developmental Review, 10, 72–100.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Cramer, B. B. (1984). Assessing phonological awareness in kindergarten children: Issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 175–190.Google Scholar
Stuart, M., & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages? Cognition, 30, 139–181.Google Scholar
Tan, L. H., Spinks, J. A., Feng, C. M., Siok, W. T., Perfetti, C. A., Xiong, J., et al. (2003). Neural systems of second language reading are shaped by native language. Human Brain Mapping, 18, 158–166.Google Scholar
Tong, X., & McBride-Chang, C. (2010). Developmental models of learning to read Chinese words. Developmental Psychology, 46, 1662.Google Scholar
Treiman, R., Mullennix, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., & Richmond-Welty, D. (1995). The special role of rimes in the description, use, and acquisition of English orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 124, 107–136.Google Scholar
Treiman, R., & Zukowski, A. (1996). Children's sensitivity to syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 61, 193–215.Google Scholar
Venezky, R. L. (2004). In search of the perfect orthography. Written Language and Literacy, 7, 139–163.Google Scholar
Wang, M., & Geva, E. (2003). Spelling performance of Chinese children using English as a second language: Lexical and visual–orthographic processes. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 1–25.Google Scholar
Wang, M., Lin, C. Y., & Yang, C. (2014). Contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology in Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition: A one-year longitudinal study. In Chen, X., Wang, Q., & Luo, Y. C. (Eds.), Reading development and difficulties in monolingual and bilingual Chinese children (pp. 191–211). Amsterdam: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, M., Perfetti, C., & Liu, Y. (2005). Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition: Cross-language and writing system transfer. Cognition, 97, 67–88.Google Scholar
Woodcock, R. W. (1987). Woodcock Reading Mastery Test—Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services.Google Scholar
Woodcock, R. W., & Munoz-Sandoval, A. F. (1995). Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery—Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services.Google Scholar
Yeung, S. S., & Ganotice, F. A. (2013). The role of phonological awareness in biliteracy acquisition among Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners who learn English-as-a-second language (ESL). Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 23, 333–343.Google Scholar
Ziegler, J. C., Bertrand, D., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Reis, A., & Faísca, L. (2010). Orthographic depth and its impact on universal predictors of reading: A cross-language investigation. Psychological Science, 21, 551–559.Google Scholar
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3–29.Google Scholar