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…

The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of nonresponders among native Chinese-speaking students struggling in English reading before and after an intensive intervention in phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge. Struggling English learners (n = 72) were screened from 668 Grade 4 students based on their English word…

Learning to read English requires learning the complex statistical dependencies between orthography and phonology. Previous research has focused on how these statistics are learned in neural network models provided with as much training as needed. Children, however, are expected to acquire this knowledge in a few years of school with only limited…

This pilot project investigated the effects of ABRACADABRA (ABRA), a web-based literacy program developed by the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, on primary school children in Hong Kong. A total of 125 Primary 2 students participated in a 14-week long study. Five classes were randomly assigned to…

The relation of rapid automatised naming (RAN) to word recognition may depend on the phonological regularity of the orthography. This study examined differential contributions of RAN to reading and writing in Korean alphabetic Hangul, logographic Hanja (Chinese) and English as a second language among 73 fifth graders in Korea across 1?year. RAN…

Error analyses using a multidimensional measure were conducted on the misspellings of Kindergarten children speaking English as a first (EL1) and English as a second language (ESL) in order to detect any differences in early spelling ability between language groups. Oral vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, phonological processing, letter/word…

This study concerns the effect of letter position on the retention of words by EFL learners. Given the fact that everyone has a mental lexicon, we would suggest that words are possibly organized in alphabetical order, then it would be likely for the learners to retain the words easily when exposed to the first letters of given words. The study…

Phonological awareness has been repeatedly reported as important for learning to read in different orthographies. It is important to understand what specific levels of phonological awareness are involved in Chinese and English for Chinese children who learn English-as-a-second-language (ESL). Measures of phonological awareness, word reading,…

English as a foreign language (EFL) spelling was examined longitudinally three times (4th, 9th, 12th grades) during 9 years of EFL study among Hebrew first language (L1) students. The study examined the impact of L1 literacy variables including phonemic awareness, word attack, and spelling on EFL spelling and the relationship between EFL literacy…

This study examined the influences of problem behaviors on kindergarten reading outcomes and investigated the extent to which explicit, code-based reading instruction moderated those relations among 206 children identified as being at risk of reading difficulty. Children from the classrooms of 57 kindergarten teachers in 12 schools were randomly…

Transfer of reading strategies from the first language (L1) to the second language (L2) has long puzzled educators, but what happens if the L1 is an alphabet language and the second is not, or if there is a mismatch in the languages' grapheme-phoneme connection? Although some students readily adjust to reading and writing in their second language,…

The Curriculum Specifications for English, set out in the Ministry of Education Malaysia syllabus for Year 1, calls for instruction in phonemic awareness (PA) as part of the acquisition of word recognition skills. Students are expected to be able to learn individual letters of the alphabet and their sounds; read aloud consonants in initial…

Twenty English-Japanese bilingual subjects were given the following reading tasks: timed, silent reading of passages in English and Japanese followed by comprehension tests and recognition of tachistoscopic presentations of twenty words in each language. The amount of reading the subjects had done in English and Japanese was assessed in an…