Extensive evidence indicates that early vocabulary skills predict later reading development among monolingually developing children. Some evidence suggests that a relationship between vocabulary and later reading also holds across languages among children whose home language differs from the school language. However, these findings have been mixed…

While it has been shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is important for children's literacy development in their first language (L1), less is known about its association with reading in a second language (L2). The present study examined the different effects of SES on the acquisition of reading in Chinese as L1 and English as L2 from ages 7 to…

There is a scarcity of research into the relationship between speech perception and production from a multilingual perspective. The present exploratory study investigates longitudinally the acquisition of rhotic sounds in 24 adolescent learners who have the same language repertoires (English, German, Polish), with English being their L2, and…

Research suggests that heterogeneous life experiences (e.g. multilingualism) might facilitate the development of mental flexibility. The current paper presents the conceptual replication of a study originally presented by Greve and colleagues [Greve, W., Koch, M., Rasche, V., and Kersten, K. (2021). Extending the Scope of the 'Cognitive Advantage'…

This paper examines the construct of bilingual phonemic awareness in Irish-English bilinguals. Though traditionally viewed as a skill or ability which transfers across languages, recent accounts have considered whether phonemic awareness has a language-specific component. This study used a cross-sectional design to examine this question. A total…

Widespread use of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) in L2 studies of individual differences implicitly assumes that L2 aptitude is a distinct cognitive facet. There is considerable evidence for prediction from L1 abilities to L2 learning. In this longitudinal study, L1-MLAT-L2 relations were examined in 307 US secondary students based on…

This study explores whether middle-school students can exploit explicitly addressed crosslinguistic lexical similarities between German and English to learn vocabulary more efficiently. Across six weeks, 260 Swiss German learners of English as a foreign language (17 classes) completed three vocabulary learning tests (T1, T2 and T3). Additionally,…

This study explored the relationship between metapragmatic knowledge and transfer of learning from one speech act to another. Using a digital application, 105 Chinese learners of English received implicit instruction on how to formulate a high-imposition request to someone in a higher social status and larger social distance. Immediately after the…

Research suggests new foreign language (FL) words are learned more easily if their phonology follows the phonotactic rules of the native language. Very little is known, however, about the impact of orthography on FL learning. This study investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting the learning of words with familiar and unfamiliar…

This study examined the crosslinguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy development. The analysis included 34 correlational studies with 41 independent samples (N = 4,104). Correlational coefficients were meta-analyzed, yielding four main findings: (a) the correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) MA…

The longitudinal study investigated the directionality and transfer mechanism of cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness between L1 and L2 in predicting early writing (word dictation) in Chinese children learning English as L2. Ninety primary school Grade 1 (P1) students were assessed on phonological awareness in Cantonese (syllable…

This systematic review aims to synthesize the literature on the effects of cross-linguistic transfer on Spanish/English bilinguals' reading comprehension skills. The search yielded at least 90 studies in which participants were Spanish/English bilinguals aged birth to Grade 12. Researchers assessed participants' decoding and/or linguistic…

This study explored second language (L2) competence in discontinuous discursive formulaic sequences, namely Chinese correlative connectives (CCCs; e.g. yinwei . . . suy 'because . . . so'), in relation to the determinants of formulaic sequence acquisition by scrutinizing L2 Chinese learners' performance on two controlled tasks. Mixed-effects…

Recent studies have uncovered substantial individual differences in first language (L1) language attainment across the lifespan and across multiple components of language. The existence of such variability raises the question of its role in second language (L2) learning. The existing body of research on L1-L2 relationships has primarily targeted…

Classrooms are not always linguistically permeable, and instruction focused on bolstering English reading comprehension too often neglects students' additional linguistic resources in languages other than English. However, to the task of comprehending English text, multilingual readers bring a host of communicative resources across multiple…