Microsoft Word Pub Series 004 # Kamil doc

 

 

6

The importance of phonological and phonemic awareness in L2 reading is less well 

established. Nonetheless, a number of studies in recent years have provided some suggestive 

evidence. Durgunoglu, Nagy, and Hancin-Bhatt (1993) investigated the factors influencing the 

word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. They found that 

phonological awareness in Spanish was significantly correlated not only with the number of 

common English words read but was also highly correlated with performance on two transfer 

tests, English-like pseudoword reading and English decoding. Interestingly, neither Spanish nor 

English oral proficiency correlated with performance on the transfer tasks. The authors concluded 

that there was evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness, and that this 

helped in second-language word recognition. Cisero and Royer (1995) also found evidence of 

cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness skills among kindergarten and first-grade 

English- and Spanish-speaking students. Furthermore, their data indicated a developmental 

progression from simpler to more complex skills—that is, from syllable awareness to onset-rime 

awareness to phonemic awareness. Studies on other bilingual populations with different native 

and second languages—for example, Turkish and Dutch (Verhoeven, 1994), English and French 

(Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999)—also showed a significant relationship 

between phonological awareness in one language and word recognition or word reading skills in 

another. This even held true for students learning English whose first language had a 

nonalphabetic orthography such as Cantonese (Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001).  

The research on phonological awareness suggests that, for L2 students who are already 

literate, reading instruction should build on their existing phonological knowledge, and does not 

have to be delayed until they are highly proficient in L2. L2 reading instruction should seek to 

take advantage of students’ knowledge of L1 literacy, when it exists, because phonological 

knowledge appears to transfer across languages. The degree of transfer is likely to be variable, 

depending on factors such as individual differences, as well as the amount of overlap in the 

linguistic and orthographic systems of the bilingual child’s two languages. 

---

 

 

7

Vocabulary  

Vocabulary knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension in L1 (NRP, 2000), and there 

is evidence that it is equally crucial to reading in L2. Garcia (1991) found that unfamiliar English 

vocabulary was the major linguistic factor that adversely affected the reading test performance of 

fifth- and sixth-grade Spanish-speaking students. In the case of bilinguals, how conceptual and 

word knowledge (vocabulary) is represented in memory is still not well understood. Young 

bilingual children growing up in dual-language homes are able to separate their two languages by 

age 3 (Arnberg & Arnberg, 1992). It is believed that words in each language are stored in 

separate lexical systems but that concepts are stored in a representation common to both 

languages (Kroll & Sholl, 1992). Some evidence suggests that vocabulary knowledge does not 

transfer well for kindergarten students learning dissimilar languages, such as Turkish and Dutch 

(Verhoeven, 1994). For older Spanish-speaking children (Grades 4–6), Nagy, Garcia, 

Durgunoglu, and Hancin-Bhatt (1993) found that a knowledge of cognates can facilitate 

comprehension in the second language. Their study investigated the relationship between Spanish 

vocabulary knowledge, the ability to recognize cognates, and English reading comprehension. 

They found a significant transfer between knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and performance on 

the English comprehension task. More important, there was an interaction between Spanish 

vocabulary knowledge and recognition of cognates. Performance on English multiple-choice 

items was highest in those cases in which the student both knew the word in Spanish and 

recognized the English cognate.  

The few studies on vocabulary transfer suggest that we should include instruction in 

bilingual strategies for resolving unknown vocabulary, such as the use of translation, cognate 

searching, and word substitution (Nagy et al., 1993; Garcia et al., 1998). The study by Nagy et al. 

(1993) showed that students underutilized their knowledge of cognates. Instruction in cognate 

recognition shows much potential as a means for enhancing Spanish-speaking children’s reading 

comprehension in English. Instruction could highlight not just the concept of cognates for 

---

 

 

8

Spanish-speaking children but also other properties of cognates—notably, the degree of 

orthographic similarity, false cognates, and a knowledge of derivational morphology of both 

English and Spanish (Nagy et al., 1993). For children whose L1 is a non-cognate of English, there 

is not a substantial body of research. We suggest that, in addition to word substitution and 

translation strategies, explicit vocabulary instruction should also be emphasized. L1 research has 

shown that explicit vocabulary instruction leads to gains in reading comprehension (Nagy & 

Scott, 2000; NRP, 2000). 

 

Comprehension 

Current views of reading conceptualize comprehension as a complex cognitive process 

whereby a reader actively interacts with a text to construct meaning (e.g., Harris & Hodges, 

1995). Meaning is therefore influenced by the text and the reader’s prior knowledge. Prior 

knowledge constitutes the “unseen” in reading (Bernhardt, 1991) because it is highly complex 

and notoriously difficult to assess. Prior knowledge can be highly idiosyncratic and based on an 

individual’s personal experiences, but it can also be shared knowledge, such as the implicit 

cultural and cultural-historic knowledge of particular groups (Bernhardt, 1991; Gee, 2000). 

Content or subject matter knowledge is another aspect of a reader’s prior knowledge, and all of 

these overlap and interact during the reading process.  

In general, U.S. researchers have found that bilingual children tend to know less about 

topics included in second-language texts (Garcia, 1991; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996). The 

same was true for a study conducted in the Netherlands, which found that Turkish and Moroccan 

third-grade students performed significantly worse than Dutch children on texts emphasizing 

Dutch culture (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998). Reading instruction needs to take into account that L2 

learners have rich sources of knowledge but different linguistic or lexical representations of this 

knowledge. Instruction should seek to build on L2 children’s knowledge and experiences—for 

---