Transcript Document

First-time L2 adult reading:
How long does it take?
Martha Young-Scholten
LESLLA-4 Antwerp
Orthographic tranparency in some
alphabetic scripts (Ziegler &
Goswami 2005; children take longest
to gain literacy in English and so will
1st time L2 readers)
Greek
Finnish
German
Italian
Spanish
Swedish
Dutch
Icelandic
Norwegian French
Portuguese
Danish
English
• Typical case: children start learning to read
– once they’ve established close to adult linguistic
competence in their native language
– when they’ve grown up in a print environment,
observing literacy practices (4-5 years)
• Child development research: norms exist
for rate of development of a range of language
skills, including development of reading (as
e.g. grade level)
• This assumes consistent amount of time spent in school
(=30 hrs/week from e.g. six years old), and further
assumes a consistent amount of time spent in school on
literacy activities
• Research does show influence of school-external factors
–
–
–
–
extent and type of early literacy experiences
presence of books at home
lexia (as in dyslexia and precocious reading)
phonological working memory capacity
• Research also points to role of instructional practices
Are there norms for L2 reading development?
• In L2 acquisition, stages/levels exist (e.g.
CEFR), yet norms for rate of progress in
reaching levels is far less clear, and only made
explicit by the foreign service, in advertising
claims and typically evident in instructed
contexts:
– Those who progress more rapidly get better marks in
school
– Those who progress more rapidly than others pay
less for courses
– Those adults who develop (quickly) to near-native
levels are deemed exceptional (those remaining at
low levels despite ample input are considered poor
L2 learners
Variables in first-time L2 adult reading
• The same extra-school variables apply:
–
–
–
–
Home literacy practices
Books at home
Lexia
Working memory (e.g. Juffs & Rodríguez 2008;
Kurvers & van de Craats 2008)
– Instructional practices
• But several important differences exist
– L2 adults often have a low level of linguistic
competence in the L2
– They may not have grown up in a print
environment
– Time spent in the classroom may be less than 30
hours per week
The policy makers’ view: fund
programmes that impart skills
• First-time L2 readers make slow progress
(slower than low-schooled L2 readers)
– Lack of documented progress = insecure funding
• But LESLLA research does show first-time L2
readers demonstrate the cognitive
prerequisites for learning to read
– What is the evidence that 1st time L2 readers learn
to read?
– How long does it take to learn become literate
‘from scratch’?
How do we know
when someone
can read?
Stages in word recognition, by strategy
(Kurvers 2007)
1. Visual recognition/guessing
based on visual or contextual cues
2. Letter naming
responding with the names or the sounds of
individual letters, without any blending
3. Letter-by-letter
sounding out letters and blending
4. Partial decoding
decoding by groups of letters
5. Direct word recognition
reading of a word is read without any spelling out.
Reading level placement by subskills
(Young-Scholten & Strom 2006)
subskills
score
varied font,
single letter
identification
survival
signs
paragraph
reading
decoding of
familiar nouns
in isolation
1
75% +
25%+
no ability,
no attempt
0%
(Kurvers’ 1)
2
75% +
75%+
attempt, with
much
guessing
20%+
(Kurvers’ 2)
3
100%
100%
slow,
sometimes
accurate
20%+
(Kurvers’ 3)
4
100%
100%
halting,
mostly
accurate
60%+
(Kurvers’ 4)
5
100%
100%
fluent
100%
(Kurvers’ 5)
Consider one group of 0schooled 1st time L2 readers
• They demonstrate the same correlations
between sub-syllabic and phonemic and
reading (decoding) as children
• Correlations exist between
morphosyntactic stage (Organic
Grammar) and reading, but not between
phonological competence and reading
(possibly phonlogical competence and
awareness)
TLlike
phonology
OG
Awareness tasks Reading
Level
stage
% correct
sub-syllabic
segment
Phung
Nien
29%
3%
2
1
51%
34%
0%
17%
1
1
Keif
Abba
Aliya
69%
56%
63%
2
2
2
61%
56%
37%
8%
17%
0%
1
1
1
Shamey
Asia
Sharif
54%
81%
71%
1
2
5
20%
36%
68%
16%
0%
42%
1
2
4
Variable success
• Why haven’t seven out of the eight
learned to read? (Is their morphosyntactic development simply too low to
support literacy development?)
• What accounts for Sharif’s success?
–
–
–
–
–
Age?
Sex?
Length of residence in the TL country?
Maritial status?
Literacy of family members?
Answers to these questions are
currently beyond us (cf. Kurvers & van
de Craats 2008)
Let’s assume successful (Kurvers’ and
Y-S & S level ‘5’) first-time L2 readers
indeed exist
• This leads to a simpler question:
under what conditions do those who
succeed learn to read?
– Hours spent in class?
– Concentration of hours (attendance)?
– Other factors? (This is not so simple…)
sex
age
Yrs
ed
Yrs
ESL
Yrs
in
US
Phung
F
51
0
1
20
Nien
F
70
0
1
2½
Keif
F
31
0
4
mo
Abba
F
54
0
Aliya
F
66
Shamey
family members’
literacy
%
TL
ph
OG
read
4 children, all
schooled, some to uni
29
2
1
3 children, all schooled
some in Vietnam
3%
1
1
9
husband finished hs;
has 8 children
69
2
1
1
4
children schooled at
refugee camp
56
2
1
0
1½
3
children; none
schooled
63
2
1
F
47
0
2
5
4 children now in
school
54
1
1
Asia
F
38
0
3
9
no children; siblings
some schooling
81
2
2
Sharif
M
30
0
2
wk
2
no children; brother,
father Somali, Arabic
literacy
71
5
4
Pilot study: what’s the range of
hours required for a 0-schooled
adult to learn to read for the first
time in a second language
(English)?
• A form was sent with request for
snowballing it to
– four teachers in the UK
– one researcher in Australia
– four ESL practioners/professionals in the
USA
Form for teachers to record
hours required to reach Level 5
name/
initials
sex
children marital
status
A
o
A
L1(s)
in
work
Approximate hours spent in
English class before emergence
of reading as shown by
successfully sounding out words.
Total hours of
English
Attendance
record
Results: one response
• JY, US refugee ESOL programme
director: 200 hours for one non-clan
Somali woman (no children)
• cf. Feldemeier (2008) on Germany
– Feedback from teachers has led to current
system of up to 1200 units (1 = 45 minutes)
for literacy learners), where these students
must have a 70% attendance record (see
Condelli et al. 2006)
– Note that German orthography is much
more transparent
What next?
• I don't want to be discouraging and I think it is a
great idea. I just don't know how to collect data on
it without a lot of work. At least here in the US,
hard data on this is very hard to come by, We could
get teachers' perceptions, which helps but I don't
think it convinces government that much. I do
agree that 0-schooled are different than those with
even a few years education. We need to get a grant
to do this! (Condelli, April 23, 2008)
• I could see asking for groups of students but how
could you ask a teacher about individual students
unless they had only a few? Most teachers here
would only have a few but large programs will have
dozens each term. If you limit to zero schooling it
will be a little easier […] (Condelli, April 21, 2008)