First component effects on L2

Second language research in the past few years has attempted to determine the extent to which the psycholinguistic perspective of L1 reading can explain L2 reading. Goodman (1971) hypothesizes that the reading process, a process in which proficient readers make generally successful predictions, will be much the same for all languages. Data-based research has supported this psycholinguistic concept of reading universals for L2 reading, and has indicated that one's first language does not determine one's reading proficiency in L2 (Rigg 1977a, and 1977b [reprinted as Chapter 14 in this volume]). However, Clarke (1979) found that a language ceiling in L2 effectively prohibits the complete transfer of L1 reading skills to L2 reading. The results of his study suggest that although the psycholinguistic assumptions of universals may be justified, the role of language proficiency in L2 may be greater than has previously been assumed by L2 researchers interested in the psycholinguistic perspective of reading. Thus, a “short circuit” in the good reader's system is caused by a limited control over the language. Cziko (1978) suggests that syntactic, semantic, and discourse constraints serve as important sources of information for the fluent L1 reader and that much of the difficulty in L2 reading may be due to an inability to make full use of those constraints because of low language proficiency. The conclusions drawn imply that an increasing emphasis in L2 reading problem remediation should lie in the first component rather than in the second component.