A1 Journal article (refereed)
Struggling with L2 alphabet : the role of proficiency in orthographic learning (2023)

Fu, Y., Bermúdez-Margaretto, B., Wang, H., Tang, D., Cuetos, F., & Alberto, D. (2023). Struggling with L2 alphabet : the role of proficiency in orthographic learning. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 76(12). https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231154910

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Fu, Yang; Bermúdez-Margaretto, Beatriz; Wang, Huili; Tang, Dong; Cuetos, Fernando; Alberto, Domínguez

Journal or series: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology

ISSN: 1747-0218

eISSN: 1747-0226

Publication year: 2023

Publication date: 23/01/2023

Volume: 76

Issue number: 12

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Publication country: United Kingdom

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231154910

Publication open access: Not open

Publication channel open access: Channel is not openly available

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/85257

Abstract

The present study examined the process of L2 orthographic learning in bilinguals with distant L1-L2 orthographies. Chinese-English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were trained with novel L2 words during a reading task. In contrast to higher proficient learners, those with lower L2 proficiency exhibited increased effects of length, frequency and lexicality across exposures and at-chance recognition of trained words. Importantly, an additional post-training task assessing the lexical integration of trained words evidenced the engagement in different L1-L2 reading strategies across different levels of L2 proficiency, hence suggesting the L1 holistic processing at the base of the effortful establishment of L2 orthographic representations shown by lower-proficient learners. Overall, these findings indicate the role of L2 proficiency in the influence that cross-linguistic variation exerts on L2 orthographic learning and highlight the need for English education programs to tackle specific grapheme-to-phoneme skills in non-alphabetic target communities.

Keywords: orthography; phonological awareness; independent study; multiliteracy

Free keywords: orthographic learning; phonological decoding; self-teaching; GAMM; biliteracy

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

VIRTA submission year: 2023

JUFO rating: 1