Children can teach themselves new words via the process of independent text reading--previous studies on self-teaching heavily focused on learning to read in a first language (L1). Limited work to date has been devoted to second language learning (L2). The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating self-teaching among English Language…

Prior work has shown intriguing differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) comprehension priming of relative clauses. We investigated English reduced relative clause priming in Chinese adult learners of English. Participants of different education levels read sentences in a self-paced, moving window paradigm. Critical…

Children can teach themselves new words via independent text reading. Previous studies on self-teaching heavily focused on learning to read in a first language (L1). Limited work was devoted to learning a second language (L2). We investigated the roles of exposure time of target pseudowords (four vs. six), availability of context (cohesive story…

The present study investigated the representation and processing of segmental and tonal information in visual Chinese word recognition in native and non-native Chinese readers. Two experiments using homophone judgement paradigm were conducted. When judging two Chinese characters (Experiment 1), both groups showed difficulties when the segmental…

We report 2 self-paced reading experiments investigating the longevity of structural priming effects in comprehending reduced relative clauses among adult Chinese-speaking learners of English. Experiment 1 showed that structural priming occurred both when prime and target sentences were immediately adjacent and when they were separated by 1 or 2…

This article aims to uncover how L2 writing is affected by alignment, a socio-cognitive process involving dynamic coordination and adaptation. For this, two studies were conducted. Study 1 required two groups of 24 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to continue in English two stories with their endings removed, both of which had a…

The present study investigated whether bilingual readers activate constituents of compound words in one language while processing compound words in the other language via decomposition. Two experiments using a lexical decision task were conducted with adult Korean-English bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision of real English…

Three experiments using a priming lexical decision paradigm were conducted to examine whether cross-language activation occurs via decomposition during the processing of derived words in Korean-English bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, when participants were given a real derived word and an interpretable derived pseudoword (i.e., illegal…

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and…

This study examined the importance of morphological awareness in Korean-English biliteracy acquisition. English is an opaque orthographic system, in which letters and sounds have indirect correspondences. Korean Hangul, on the other hand, is a transparent orthographic system where there are direct letter-sound correspondences. Sixty-five children…

Cross-language phonological and orthographic relationship in the biliteracy acquisition of children learning to read Korean and English was investigated in this study. Forty-five Korean-English bilingual children were tested in first-language (L1; Korean) and 2nd-language (L2; English) reading skills focusing on 2 reading processes--phonological…

This study is an investigation of the contribution of morphological awareness in Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Comparable tasks in Chinese and English were administered to test children's skills in morphological awareness, phonological awareness, oral vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension. The results showed that after the…

This study investigated cross-language and writing system relationship in biliteracy acquisition of children learning to read two different writing systems--Chinese and English. Forty-six Mandarin-speaking children were tested for their first language (Chinese-L1) and second language (English-L2) reading skills. Comparable experiments in Chinese…

Reviews recent research evidence for universal and orthography- or language-specific processes in the development of basic reading skills in school-age children. The review focuses on three different aspects of reading--phonological processing, rapid naming, and morphosyntactic complexity--targeted in recent research on development of word…

Examines how alphabetic readers learn to read Chinese. Explores the effect of the frequency of the characters in their curriculum on performance of a lexical decision and naming task. Finds that the beginning learners were sensitive to the structural complexity and composition of characters. Suggests that perceptual learning plays an important…