The Chinese writing system is different from English in that individual words both comprise one to four characters and are not separated by clear word boundaries (e.g., interword spaces). These differences raise the question of how readers of Chinese know where to move their eyes to support efficient lexical processing? The widely accepted…

This study used eye-tracking to investigate the real-time processing of phonetic and semantic radicals (components of Chinese characters that give clues to their pronunciation and meaning) by intermediate-level university Chinese foreign language (CFL) learners. Additionally, the study examined how knowledge and awareness of radicals affect…

In the current study we used the gaze-contingent moving window paradigm to directly compare the second language (L2) English perceptual span of two groups that speak languages with essentially the same lexicon and grammar but crucially with different writing directions (and scripts): Hindi (read left to right) and Urdu (read right to left). This…

Within the field of linguistics, whether considering language contact situations (Weinreich, 1979) or foreign language education (Lado, 1957), the topic of language transfer, especially as it relates to pronunciation, has always been an item of particular interest. While research on such transfer has mostly focused on various phenomena of the L1…

It is well known that information from spoken language is integrated into reading processes, but the nature of these links and how they are acquired is less well understood. Recent evidence has suggested that predictions about the written form of newly learned spoken words are already generated prior to print exposure. We extend this work to…

When reading in a second language, a reader's first language may be involved. For word reading, the question is how and at what level: lexical, pre-lexical, or both. In three experiments, we employed an implicit reading task (color judgment) and an explicit reading task (word naming) to test whether a Chinese meaning equivalent character and its…

Several studies have shown that narratives can influence readers' beliefs about themselves. In the present study, our goal was to investigate whether stories portraying a strong protagonist can positively influence recipients' beliefs of being in control of events in their own lives (self-related control beliefs). Experiment 1 showed that…

The approach to language learning as a way of coming to understand target culture and its impact on target language is reflected in the concept of teaching and learning languages through the integration of intercultural capabilities. The concept will be supported by a number of examples taken from authentic materials language learners have…

In alphabetic languages, print consistently elicits enhanced, left-lateralized N170 responses in the event-related potential compared to control stimuli. In the current study, we adopted a cross-linguistic design to investigate N170 tuning to logographic Chinese and to "pinyin," an auxiliary phonetic system in Chinese. The results…

Korean has visually salient syllable units that are often mapped onto either prefixes or suffixes in derived words. In addition, prefixed and suffixed words may be processed differently given a left-to-right parsing procedure and the need to resolve morphemic ambiguity in prefixes in Korean. To test this hypothesis, four experiments using the…

Thai has its own distinctive alphabetic script with syllabic characteristics as it has implicit vowels for some consonants. Consonants are written in a linear order, but vowels can be written non-linearly above, below or to either side of the consonant. Of particular interest to the current study are that vowels can precede the consonant in…

Proposes that writers must form accurate representations of how their readers will interpret their texts to convey their ideas successfully. Two experiments demonstrated that writers who received feedback from their readers were better able to form representations in subsequent works than were writers who did not receive feedback. (18 References)…

Argues that interaction between reader and writer in academic texts can draw on both interactive and interactional resources: interactive resources help guide the reader through the text, while the interactional resources involve the reader collaboratively in the development of the text. (Author/VWL)