Orthographic learning and self-teaching in a bilingual and biliterate context

New insights into bilingual visual word recognition: State of the art on the role of orthographic markedness, its theoretical implications, and future research directions

In the past decade, research on bilingual visual word recognition has given rise to a new line of study focusing on a sublexical orthographic variable referred to as orthographic markedness, derived from the comparison of the two orthotactic distributions known by a bilingual reader. Orthographic markers have been shown to speed up language decisions but also, to some extent, to modulate language nonselectivity during lexical access (i.e., the degree of co-activation of lexical representations of the two languages). In this review, we (1) describe the results available in the literature about orthographic markedness on language membership detection and lexical access and discuss the locus of these effects, which leads us to (2) present theoretical extensions to the bilingual interactive activation models and discuss their respective adequacy to the data, finally leading us to (3) propose future research directions in the study of orthographic markedness, such as extension to different reading tasks and contexts as well as considering developmental and learning dynamics.

Struggling with L2 alphabet: The role of proficiency in orthographic learning

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 programmes to tackle specific grapheme-to-phoneme skills in non-alphabetic target communities.

Cross-linguistic influence of phonological awareness and phonological recoding skills in Chinese reading acquisition among early adolescent students

This study investigated crosslinguistic phonological awareness and phonological recoding skills in Chinese reading acquisition among early Chinese adolescent students. 76 Chinese children participated in this study and finished a series of reading measurements over 1 year (from Grade 5 to Grade 6). In Grade 5, they were assessed by Chinese phonological awareness (syllable, onset, rhyme, phoneme, and tone awareness), English phonological awareness (syllable, onset, and rime, phoneme awareness) as well as English and Chinese phonological recoding skills. In Grade 6, the students completed the measurement of Chinese lexical inferencing ability. Subsequent hierarchical regression analyses showed that Time 1 (Grade 5) Chinese phonological awareness and recoding skills made a joint intra-lingual contribution to later Chinese lexical inferencing ability. Moreover, English phonological recoding skills had a unique inter-lingual contribution to later Chinese lexical inferencing ability after age, nonverbal intelligence, and English phonological awareness were controlled for. Results expanded the self-teaching hypothesis to account for variations within and across languages over time and underscored the uniqueness of inter-lingual phonological recoding in later orthographic and semantic learning.

Language-Specific Effects in Response to Spelling Intervention in Italian and in English as an Additional Language

According to a language-integrated view of spelling development, learning to spell involves the same language-learning skills across alphabetic systems. A prediction based on this view is that the same spelling training should be equally effective for learning to spell in a shallow (Italian, native language) or an opaque (English, additional language) orthography. We tested this prediction by teaching 6- to 9-year-old Italian children to use multiletter spelling units to spell words in Italian and English. The children were trained on the spelling of Italian words containing orthographic difficulties that required switching from phoneme-grapheme spelling correspondences to larger grain size (multiletter) spelling units. In a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial, 108 Italian children (ages 6-9 years) were assigned to the experimental spelling training or a waiting list condition. Their ability to spell the trained (Italian and English) word lists and to generalize the acquired knowledge to new (untrained) words was assessed. Similar learning effects were found in the two languages for the trained word lists. However, generalization of the acquired spelling knowledge to new words occurred only in English. The influence of language-specific factors on learning to spell could account for these findings.

The influence of orthographic depth on multilinguals' neural networks

Orthographic depth, the consistency and complexity of grapheme-phoneme correspondence, influences brain activation in multilinguals’ first (L1) and second language (L2). The intrinsic functional connectivity of cross-language transfer was investigated between two groups of multilinguals, those whose L2 orthography is deeper than their L1 (S-to-D group) and those whose L2 orthography is shallower than their L1 (D-to-S group). Based on previous reports, we focused on two seed regions: the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) and the left posterior supramarginal gyrus (pSMG). Group comparisons revealed stronger connectivity for the D-to-S group between the left pSMG and the right precuneus/cuneal cortex and the right SMG/angular gyrus. Moreover, we found that the greater the linguistic orthographic distance—the less similar in orthographic depth two languages are—the greater the negative connectivity between the left pSMG and the right pSMG, middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and frontal pole, and a cluster that included the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars opercularis, frontal operculum, and insular cortex. When linguistic distance was greater, there was also greater negative connectivity between the VWFA and the left precuneus. Furthermore, stronger connectivity was found between the left pSMG and the right precuneus in multilinguals who spoke at least three languages (trilinguals) compared to those who only spoke two languages (bilinguals). Follow-up analyses revealed that this difference was driven by stronger intrinsic connectivity in D-to-S trilinguals compared to the S-to-D trilinguals. Taken together, the findings of this study suggest that multilinguals’ intrinsic functional connectivity is shaped by the orthographic depth of their L2 in relation to L1, as well as differences between bilingualism and trilingualism.

Biliteracy and acquisition of novel written words: the impact of phonological conflict between L1 and L2 scripts

The acquisition of new orthographic representations is a rapid and accurate process in proficient monolingual readers. The present study used biliterate and bialphabetic population to address the impact of phonological inconsistencies across the native (L1) and second (L2) alphabets. Naming latencies were collected from 50 Russian-English biliterates through a reading-aloud task with familiar and novel word forms repeated across 10 blocks. There were three Script conditions: (1) native Cyrillic, (2) non-native Roman, and (3) Ambiguous (with graphically identical, but phonologically inconsistent graphemes shared by both alphabets). Our analysis revealed the main effect of Script on both reading and orthographic learning: naming latencies during training were longer for the ambiguous stimuli, particularly for the novel ones. Nonetheless, novel word forms in the ambiguous condition approached the latencies for the familiar words along the exposures, although this effect was faster in the phonologically consistent trials. Post-training tests revealed similarly successful performance patterns for previously familiar and newly trained forms, indicating successful rapid acquisition of the latter. Furthermore, we found the highest free recall rates for the ambiguous stimuli. Overall, our results indicate that phonological inconsistency initially interferes with the efficiency of novel word encoding. Nevertheless, it does not prevent efficient attribution of orthographic representations; instead, the knowledge of two distinct alphabets supports a more efficient learning and a better memory for ambiguous stimuli via enhancing their encoding and retrieval.

Learning Orthographic and Semantic Representations Simultaneously During Shared Reading

Purpose The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared reading session. We also examined whether individual differences in either or both of orthographic and semantic learning during shared reading in English were related to word reading in English and French concurrently and 6 months longitudinally in emergent English-French bilinguals. Method Sixty-two Grade 1 children (35 girls; M _age = 75.89 months) listened to 12 short stories, each containing four instances of a novel word, while the examiner pointed to the text. Choice measures of the spellings and meanings of the novel words were completed immediately after reading each set of three stories and again 1 week later. Standardized measures of word reading as well as controls for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, and phonological awareness were also administered. Results Children scored above chance on both immediate and delayed measures of orthographic and semantic learning. Orthographic learning was related to both English and French word reading at the same time point and 6 months later. In contrast, the relations between semantic learning and word reading were nonsignificant for both languages after including controls. Conclusion Shared reading is a valuable context for learning both word meanings and spellings, and the learning of orthographic representations in particular is related to word reading abilities. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13877999.

Distinct Benefits Given Large Versus Small Grain Orthographic Instruction for English-Speaking Adults Learning to Read Russian Cyrillic

Initial instruction emphasizing large grain units (i.e., words) showed distinct advantages over small grain instruction for English-speaking adults learning to read an artificial orthography (Brennan and Booth in Read Writ 28(7):917-938, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-015-9555-2 ). The current study extends this research by training 34 English-speaking adults to read Russian Cyrillic given initial instruction emphasizing either large or small units (words or letters). Results reveal no differences on word learning, but higher accuracy on letter-phoneme matching given letter-based instruction and higher accuracy on rime-rhyme matching given word-based instruction. Differences in phonological awareness (PA) skill showed that higher PA skill resulted in higher accuracy and slower reaction times only for the adults given the instruction with the word emphasis, suggesting that adults with high PA skill given word-based instruction may engage in time intensive small grain analyses (e.g., grapheme-phoneme correspondence) even when their attention is directed to larger grain units. Overall, these results extend previous findings and reveal that word and letter-based instruction each have distinct advantages for facilitating increased sensitivity to either letters/phonemes or rimes/rhymes when adults are learning a natural second (L2) consistent alphabetic orthography.

Direct and indirect effects of multilingualism on novel language learning: An integrative review

Accumulated recent research suggests that prior knowledge of multiple languages leads to advantages in learning additional languages. In the current article, we review studies examining potential differences between monolingual and multilingual speakers in novel language learning in an effort to uncover the cognitive mechanisms that underlie such differences. We examine the multilingual advantage in children and adults, across a wide array of languages and learner populations. The majority of this literature focused on vocabulary learning, but studies that address phonology, grammar, and literacy learning are also discussed to provide a comprehensive picture of the way in which multilingualism affects novel language learning. Our synthesis indicates two avenues to the multilingual advantage including direct transfer of prior knowledge and prior skills as well as indirect influences that result from multilingual background and include more general changes to the cognitive-linguistic system. Finally, we highlight topics that are in need of future systematic research.