Cross-Linguistic+Relationships+in+Second-Language+Learners

By Fred Genesee and Esther Geva
Submitted by Matiana Elias & Yasmin Ruiz

The studies analyzed in this chapter dealt with the cross-linguistic relationships in working memory phonological processes, and oral language in regards to development of literacy skills. In other words how does the first language influence second language development in regards to literacy skills in the domains of working memory, phonological processes, and oral language? The studies examined in this chapter looked at phonological processes which include phonological awareness, phonological recording, and phonological short-term memory. They also looked at the research on oral language- phonological skills (auditory discrimination, intraword segmentation, and speech production), vocabulary, grammar and discourse-level skills. The panels wanted to look at the results of the studies systematically by age, stage of second language development but they found that there were not enough studies to be able to look at the data systematically. The panelists wanted to view the it systematically because of the theory that first language influences more in the early stages of second–language development than in the later stages were learners have acquired more of a language. (NLP, 175)
 * Introduction**

The ability to actively manipulate information and holding the information in memory is working memory. They looked at three studies and found that there were significant correlations between working memory and student’s first and second languages. The grade levels in these studies ranged from 1 to 6 and 10th and they looked at Hebrew-English, Portuguese-English, Persian-English bilingual students. (NLP, 176)
 * Working Memory**

In these studies they either looked at the relationship or if there was a correlation between first and second language phonological awareness. All but one (Abu-Rabia) found significant correlations or relationships between first and second languages. The different studies looked at initial/final phoneme detection and deletion, rhyme detection, phoneme and word segmentation, phoneme blending, segmenting, and matching (NLP, 176). In terms of phonological recoding the three studies examined found inconsistent results. The panel is not sure why this happened but they think it is due to the fact that the age range used by the researchers is too broad. The panel also found that the two studies examined in the area of phonological short-term memory were inclusive. One study found significant correlations and the other did not. It is believed that the way data was not differentiated in one study could have obscured the age correlations.
 * Phonological Processes**

These studies do find evidence that there are effects in cross-linguistic in phonological processes. There needs to be more research done in the area of phonological short-term memory and phonological recoding because of the inconsistencies. There is some evidence that cross-language effects in phonological awareness happens more in the younger learners than the older learners because they have acquired more complete second language proficiency. There is a need for more research in this area.

__Phonology__- Phonology is the ability to recognize and produce sound and sound sequences that make up language (NLP, 178). The studies are examined because there may be a relationship between oral language and second language reading and writing. One study looked at the phonological production of English language learners. They found that the children were acquiring separate first and second language phonological systems, but they were not acquiring English phonology as a monolingual child would. The speech patterns they showed would have seemed like speech impairment to an English-speaking child. However it is a speech pattern transferred from the first language to the second. Another study showed that as the children became more proficient in the second language, that there was less influence from the first language. In a study done with Spanish-English bilinguals they found that children had difficulty discriminating sounds used in English that are not used in Spanish.
 * Oral Language**

__Vocabulary__- the studies on the cross language effect on vocabulary development identified whether second language vocabulary knowledge are influenced by the first language. In one study students were asked to interpret the meaning of English and Spanish metaphors. The results to this study showed that there was a significant relationship the cognitive complexity of their interpretations in Spanish and English. The studies in vocabulary knowledge in Spanish ELLs imply that there is considerable cross language effects on word knowledge. All three studies report that there is some first language effect on second language acquisition in vocabulary, but more studies are needed.

In summary, the studies have revealed that ELL’s with high levels of phonological awareness in their first language will have high levels in their second. Moreover, ELL’s were found to exhibit developmental patterns in the second language in speech discrimination, speech production, and intraword segmentation that was different from native English speakers (NLP, p.162). Evidence was also found on second language vocabulary, they found that effects in vocabulary would happen in the higher skilled vocabulary.

Although studies have shown that there is a relationship between first and second language and literacy, more research is needed in this field of study. It has been proven that high phonological awareness in the first language equals high phonological awareness in the second, but how to achieve this goal needs to be further studied and incorporated into the classroom.
 * Recommendations**

As teachers of ELL students, we find that it is imperative to search for successful ways of teaching ELL’s. Until that time we need to focus on small group instruction in reading, writing, and vocabulary development. Differentiated instruction where students are grouped by ability levels should be incorporated into the classrooms and teachers should be given the materials needed to successfully teach the students. Recommondations Sumitted by Matiana Elias [|Yasmin Ruiz NLP Recommendation] ** Chapter 8: First-Language Oral Proficiency and  ** ** Second-Language Literacy By Esther Geva and Fred Genesee
 * Putting Recommendations into Practice**

Submitted by: Espy Barba and Maribel Villegas ** This chapter reviews research which deals with first-language oral proficiency and how it is related to the development of literacy skills in English. The panel had two overarching questions which underlie the research discussed in this chapter: **1.** What is the relationship between first-language oral proficiency and second-language word-level literacy skills? **2.** What is the relationship between first-language oral proficiency and second-language text-level literacy skills? **Word-level skills** refer to word reading, pseudoword reading, and spelling. **Text-level skills** refer to reading comprehension and writing. ** Relationships Between First-Language Oral Proficiency and Word and Pseudoword Reading Skills in English ** Two studies conducted in the United States with English-Spanish bilingual children in elementary school yielded similar results. · **Durgunoglu, Nagy, and Hancin-Bhatt (1993)** examined the English word and pseudoword reading skills of first-grade bilingual beginning readers whose dominant language was Spanish. They found that first-language oral proficiency measured by the Pre-Language Assessment Scales (Pre-LAS), with subtests that examine expressive and receptive language skills in three domains of oral language (e.g., morphology, syntax, and semantics), did not predict performance on the English word reading and pseudoword decoding tasks. However, children’s level of phonological awareness, the ability to consciously attend to the sounds of language as distinct from its meaning, in their first-language, Spanish, predicted their English word reading and pseudoword decoding skills. · **Quiroga, Lemos-Britten, Mostafapour, Abbott, and Berninger (2002)** examined first-grade Spanish-English bilinguals who had not had systematic instruction in Spanish. The study found that Spanish oral language proficiency as measured by the Pre-LAS was not related to English word or pseudoword reading, whereas phonological awareness in Spanish (and in English) was highly correlated with word and pseudoword reading in English. **The strong correlations between first- and second-language phonological awareness suggest that phonological awareness is a common underlying proficiency.** Findings from five other studies involving elementary and middle-grade and one high school English-language learners with different first languages (Farsi, Cantonese, and Urdu) suggest that the results reported earlier are not limited to English-Spanish bilinguals. · **Gholamain and Geva (1999)** examined native-Farsi-speaking English-language learners in Grades 1 to 5 and found that verbal working memory and RAN, assessed in the first language (Farsi), accounted for significant variance in the students’ word and pseudoword reading scored in English. · **Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995)** examined Portuguese-English bilingual fourth- to sixth-grade low-socioeconomic status (SES) students attending a Portuguese heritage language program and found that the students’ first language (Portuguese) did not correlate with word or pseudoword reading in English. However, the authors also note that the bilingual readers who had good word-level reading skills in their second language had similar profiles with respect to phonological processing, rid-level reading skills and spelling in their first language. · **Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, and Wade-Woolley (2001)** examined Cantonese-English bilingual students in Grades 1 to 8 and found no significant correlations between grammatical sensitivity in Cantonese (the first language) and word and pseudoword reading skills in English. However, phonemic awareness in Cantonese, assessed by a rhyme-detection task, correlated significantly with word and pseudoword reading skills in English. · **Mumtaz and Humphreys (2002)** examined Urdu-English bilingual 7-and 9-year-old students and found that children with high oral language proficiency in the first language (Urdu) may be better at applying Urdu decoding skills to English word reading of irregular words, resulting in relatively more errors in English irregular word reading. Correlational analyses showed that two aspects of phonological processing measured in Urdu (rhyme detection and phonological memory) correlated positively and significantly with word-level reading skills in English. Other findings include that the better English word and pseudoword reading skills in the group of children who had high vocabulary knowledge in Urdu was due to better phonological awareness skills in English and Urdu. · **Ahern, Dixon, Kimura, Okuna, and Gibson (1980)** examined fourth-grade speakers of the Hawaiian Creole dialect of English (HCE) and found that links between first-language oral skills and word-level reading skills in English are not invariant. The authors found that instruction can enhance language-minority students’ ability to identify differences between the first and second languages and thereby compensate for interference from first-language oral proficiency. · **Abu-Rabia (1997)** examined the relationship between first-language oral proficiency and word-level reading skills of 10th-grade English-language learners. Abu-Rabia found that first-language (Hebrew) oral language proficiency, as measured by a grammatical sensitivity task (oral cloze), did not correlate with the students’ performance on English word reading tasks, including word attack and word recognition. However, the correlations between measures of phonemic awareness and working memory in Hebrew and word-level reading skills in English were positive and moderately high. **Considering the findings from studies of elementary and middle-school students and one study involving high school children indicate rather consistently that measures of first-language oral proficiency do not correlate with English word reading skills and do not explain unique variance in English word reading skills. However, when relationships between first-language phonological processing skills and English word reading skills are examined, the results suggest that first-language phonological processing skills are closely related to the development of word reading skills in English.** ** Relationship Between First-Language Oral Proficiency and Spelling in English ** Extensive research has shown that knowledge of letter names is essential for beginning writing, and that young native-English–speaking children develop knowledge of the orthographic patterns of their language by progressing from small to large units, and that morphological strategies also guide their spelling (Treiman, Tincoff, Rodriquez, Mouzaki, & Francis, 1998). Little research is available on the developmental foundations of spelling for language-minority students on the role of first-language oral proficiency in the English spelling performance of English-language learners. Three correlational studies at the elementary and middle-grade levels and one at the high school level examined the role of first-language oral proficiency in the acquisition of English spelling skills. · **Arab-Moghaddam and Sénéchal (2001)** examined second- and third-grade Farsi- English bilingual children living in Canada and found that vocabulary knowledge in Farsi, the students’ first language, did not correlate with their spelling performance in English, although vocabulary knowledge in English did. · **Gottardo et al. (2001)** examined Chinese-English bilingual students in Grades 1 to 8 and found that oral proficiency in students’ first language, Chinese did not correlate with performance on an orthographic-recognition task in English, in which students were asked to judge which member in each pair of pseudowords was possible English spelling. · **Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995),** reviewed earlier, found that first-language oral proficiency did not correlate with spelling scores in English. However, pseudoword decoding in Portuguese correlated significantly with spelling in English. This study again illustrates the lack of a relationship between grammatical sensitivity in the first- and second-language spelling skills. · **Abu-Rabia (1997),** reviewed earlier, found no significant correlations between performance on a grammatical sensitivity cloze task in Hebrew and performance on a test of English orthographic conventions. **** Relationship Between First-Language Oral Proficiency and Reading Comprehension in English ** Research has shown that one factor that influences reading comprehension in monolingual English-speaking students is oral language proficiency (Carver, 2000). Unfortunately, there is little research on the development of second-language reading comprehension skills in language-minority students at all grade levels, from elementary to high school and even less research on the role of first-language oral proficiency in the development of second-language literacy. · **Dufva and Voeten (1999)** examined the reading comprehension skills of third-grade Finnish-speaking students who were learning English as a foreign language in school. They report that students’ listening comprehension skills in Finnish, assessed in Grade 1, had an indirect effect on English reading comprehension scores in Grade 3. They also report that the students’ phonological memory, assessed in Grade 2, correlated significantly with Grade 3 reading comprehension in English (direct effect). · **Royer and Carlo (1991)** did a longitudinal study of fifth- and sixth-grade Spanish speaking English-language learners in a transitional bilingual education program. They found no significant correlation between the students’ Spanish listening comprehension skills assessed in Grade 5 and their reading comprehension in English in Grade 6. · **Nguyen,Shin, & Krashen, 2001** examined the relationship between first language oral proficiency and reading outcomes. The study points to a lack of relationship between first-language proficiency and general second-language reading achievement. · **Buriel and Cardoza (1988)** examined the relationship between self-reports of first-language (Spanish) proficiency and English reading comprehension in ninth-grade Spanish-English bilingual students. Their research did not find significant relationships between first-language proficiency and English reading comprehension for first- and second-generation Mexican-American high school English-language learners, but did report negative relationships between first-language proficiency and/or use and English reading for third-generation Mexican-American students. **Overall, most of these studies found no relationship between reading comprehension in English and first-language oral proficiency measured through self-ratings of first-language proficiency or language use. However, there is evidence from this and other chapters that phonological memory and sociocultural context are associated with the development of reading comprehension in English.** ** Relationship Between First-Language Oral Proficiency and Writing in English ** There was very little research done in this area to conclude anything about the relationship between first-language oral proficiency and second-language writing ability. There were two studies that were discussed earlier. **Overall, these studies indicate that the effects may vary depending on the similarity and differences between the first- and second-language orthography. It is important to understand the similarities and differences between the first-language and English. It is also important to note the factors that influence the relationship between first-language oral proficiency and second-language literacy, such as age of the student and the students’ level of first-language oral proficiency and literacy.** It is important for us as teachers, to understand the level of oral proficiency in our students’ first-language, to know what that first-language is, and to know the similarities and differences between the first-language and English. One way of doing this is to have survey/interview questions ready the first trimester of parent-conferences. This survey/interview can have specific questions for the parent in regards to the language(s) spoken at home, the oral proficiency of the child in his/her first-language, and general questions about how much English they (the parents) speak and how they (or who) will be able to help the child at home with homework. It is important to establish good rapport with the parents and assure them that these questions are private information and they will be beneficial in the English literacy development of their child. This is valuable information that can help guide your instruction and also the type of homework being sent home. NLP Recommendations submitted by Maribel Villegas NLP Recommendations submitted by Espy Barba
 * Summary of Findings: **
 * Correlational designs failed to find significant relationships between measures of first-language oral proficiency and English spelling skills. The conclusion that there is a positive relationship between phonological processing in the first language and spelling in English is rather tentative at this point. Evidence suggest that phonological differences between English-language learners’ first language and English can hinder or facilitate the acquisition of specific English spelling patterns. Studies suggest that the link among first language oral language proficiency, phonological processes, and spelling achievement in English is not invariant.
 * Cronnell (1985) examined the relationship between first-language oral language skills and English writing development in middle-school English-language learners. They found that students were able to write well-constructed stories despite numerous syntactic errors that could be attributed to influences from the students’ first-language.
 * Okamura-Bichard (1985) studied sixth-grade Japanese-English bilingual students whose families resided temporarily in the United States and attended public school during the week and Japanese school on the weekend. The study found that measures of listening comprehension in Japanese did not correlate with self-report measures of writing ability in English. The researcher points out one very important factor and that is the dissimilarity between Japanese and English, especially in their writing systems.
 * __ Recommendations/ Put into Practice: __**

Submitted by: Jill Gutierrez First and Second-Language Literacy by Cheryl Dressler with Michael Kamil**
 * Chapter 9

This chaper focuses on the cross-linguistic influences of literacy knowledge, processes, and strategies in children who are learning a second language. This report of first and second language literacy includes studies whose students have some degree of literacy in their first and second language, it examines studies using written measures, and it investigates first to second language transfer. Most of the studies acknowledged in this chapter analyzed children who are learning English as a second language. Studies that had students learning a second language other than English were still included in this report because they were found to be relevant when it comes to the topic of transfer in language-minority children. The six subcomponents of literacy analyzed in this chapter are word reading, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, strategy use, and writing. The two questions asked in this chapter are 1. What components of literacy have a relationship between first and second language literacy? 2. What evidence does this body of studies provide to support or contradict accounts of transfer?
 * __Introduction__**

__**Summary of Findings**__ The results of the word reading studies show that word reading skills in one language transfer to another. In other words, if a child is good at word reading in Spanish he/she will most likely be good at word reading in English. However, processing stategies for word reading are language specific. Findings show that the exposure to written material and level of cognitive development affect spelling skills in students. With increased exposure to written print in English, students will progress from using thier phonemic awareness strategies to visual strategies for spelling. The findings of the vocabulary section in this chapter show that word knowledge transfers across languages. Vocabulary can enhance word reading and comprehension of the text. The results of reading comprehension show a positive correlation between reading comprehension in a students first language to reading comprehension in a students second language. All of the studies, except for one, show that bilingual students who had positive reading strategies in one language also do so in their other language. Futhermore, it was also found that if a student has good reading stratgies they will most likely have good reading performance. For writing, the results show that if a student is a good writer in his/her first language, then most likely the student will be a good writer in his/her second language.

One recommendation for this study would be to show grade level specific studies on word reading, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, reading strategies, and writing. It would be interesting to see how each grade level performed considering each grade level has different content standards and students come in to each grade level at different literacy levels. Another recommendation would be to test for proficiency in the child's first language and then see how proficient they are in the second language. This chapter finds that if a child is proficient in their first language then they will usually be proficient in their second language. The studies don't show how long it takes for the students to be proficient in their second language. It would be interesting to see how long it takes for the bilingual students to be proficient in both languages. These studies in chapter 9 seem to focus on large groups of students learning a second language. It would be interesting to focus on just a few students, while keeping thier identity anonymous, to see the progression of literacy in both languages.
 * __Recommendations__**

Teachers should consider doing their classroom action research on word reading, spelling, vocabualary, reading comprehension, reading strategies, and writing with their second language learners. The research should be grade specific and could focus on a small group of students or just one student. This kind of research could be very beneficial to students and teachers. Testing for proficiency in the child's first and second language should be conducted at the beginning of the research study. This proficiency testing could occur throughout the year and then report the findings of growth in the first and second language. A small group of students should be considered instead of the whole class to make the research more managable. I plan on doing my classroom action reasearch in the fall in the area of writing with my ELL Kindergarten students. It will be interesting to see their progress through the writing process.
 * __Putting Recommendations into Practice__**

submitted by: Jill Gutierrez 7/2/08
 * __Recommendations of the NLP Report__**

The National Literacy Panel report discusses many studies conducted by researchers of education to better understand the needs of English Language Learners. In chapter 9, //several studies demonstrated that with increased esposure to English print, students progress from heavy reliance on the phonological strategy in spelling (spelling by ear) to use of the visual strategy as well. Such developments point to the dynamic quality of interlanguages// (Selinker, 1972), p. 209.

__**School-based implementation Reading**__ There are many reading strategies teachers can use to help their ELL learners increase their exposure to print to increase spelling skills. Here are some strategies teachers can use in their classrooms to increase word knowlege and exposure to print. +read alouds +shared reading +guided reading +reading a morning message +buddy reading +students read their own journal writing +listening posts +environmental print in the classroom +word wall +word chart +decoding strategies

Students also need to learn important writing strategies to become effective spellers. Here are some specific examples of stratgies teachers can use to help their English Language Learners with spelling. +journal writing every day +increase journal writing time +segmenting practice +activating prior knowledge +academic disscussion time to talk about what students will write about +thinking maps +interactive writing +shared writing +modeled writing +CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word practice
 * __Writing__**

To help ELL students become effective spellers it is important for teachers in Kindergarten to do interactive writing. The students will learn how to form letters, write words, where to put a period, capital letters, and spaces between words. They learn how to blend words to hear that each sound represents a letter. Students should sit on the rug facing the teacher. I usually tell the students what they will write about, but you could also let them choose the topic. At the beginning of the year, I start with one word such as color words or labeling objects around the room words. Later on, we begin to write sentences interactively. If it is the beginning of the year and we are writing just one word at a time, I write the first letter on the white board for all the students to see and say that letter as I write it. We also sing the song for the letter and sound. I asked all the students to write that letter on their hand or on the rug in front of them, then I choose one student to come up and write the letter on the paper I chose for the interactive writing. We continue like this until the word is formed. I do not erase the letters until the whole word is completed. I try to make it fun for the students by letting them use smelly markers to write with and I tell them I will be choosing students to come up and write that I see really paying close attention. They all want to be the helper so this usually keeps their attention. At the end of the lesson, we review the letters we wrote and read the word we wrote together. Not only does this increase their sound/symbol knowlege but it also increases their word knowledge.
 * __An example of interactive writing in Kindergarten to increase spelling skills in ELL students__**

+label objects around the classroom +color words +shapes +retell a story +interactive writing books (school, feelings, senses, places we go, transportation) +write a morning message together +describe a character in a story +write words for each letter of the alphabet +describe a science project +use interactive writing on a bulletin board
 * __Examples of Interactive Writing__**

[|www.centeroninstruction.org/resources.cfm?category=ell&subcategory=&grade_start=&grade_end.com] [|www.pbskids.com] [|www.enchantedlearning.com] www.tlsbooks.com www.hubbardscupboard.org www.readinga-z.com [|www.starfall.com]
 * __Additional Resources__**

__**Chapter 9**__ First- and Second-Language Literacy By Cheryl Dressler & Michael Kamil

Submitted by Brandi Gutierrez

The focus of this chapter is the cross-linguistic influences of literacy knowledge, processes, and strategies in children who are learning a second language. This chapter discusses the relationships between oral language proficiency and literacy. It focuses on the subcomponents word reading, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, strategy use, and writing. The studies reviewed examined outcomes in either reading or writing modality and used quantitative and qualitative methods. The research questions addressed in this chapter are:
 * __Introduction__**
 * 1) For what components of literacy is there a relationship between first- and second-language literacy?
 * Under what circumstances is there evidence for cross-language influences that facilitate literacy acquisition in the second language?
 * Under what circumstances does literacy in the first language interfere with second-language literacy?
 * 1) What evidence does this body of studies provide to support or contradict theoretical accounts of transfer?

In the subcomponent of word reading the researchers found support for the interdependence hypothesis, that suggest word reading skills in one language transfer to the other. For example, if a student can read a word in Spanish well, they should be able to read a word in English well, too. However since there are differences in orthographic complexity between two languages there is a reliance on phonological strategies rather than the visual strategy in the second language. In the subcomponent of spelling the researchers found that there is an effect of first-language spelling skills on students’ spelling of English words. With increased exposure to English print, students will progress from phonemic awareness strategies to the use of visual strategies as well. In the subcomponent of vocabulary the researchers found that word knowledge can transfer across languages. Vocabulary enhances word knowledge and comprehension of text. In the subcomponent of reading comprehension the researchers found cross-language transfer of reading comprehension across different languages, all ages of children, over time, and learners of English as a second-language. In the subcomponent of reading strategies the researchers found that bilingual students who read well in one language also read well in another language. However if a student is not proficient in their first language they will have difficulty in their second language. In the subcomponent of writing skills the researchers found that if a student is a good writer in their first language they will be a good writer in their second language.
 * __Summary of Findings__**

There is quite a bit of research about 5 of the 6 subcomponents of first- and second-language literacy. You can find information on word reading, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and strategy use. However, there is not enough research on first- and second language writing. This subcomponent is the shortest and more research needs to be conducted in this field. As a teacher in an urban setting, where a majority of the population is English language learners, I can help to facilitate research in this area. I personally have a vested interest in writing for all my students. It has been a professional goal of mine, as a kindergarten teacher, to have all my students write four sentences and draw a picture that will correspond to their writing by the end of their kindergarten school year. It is important for me to understand the way I teach writing to help my students and myself obtain this goal. I have already begun an action research project that explores writing in kindergarten and my research can benefit this panel in this subcomponent.
 * __Recommendations/Put into Practice__**

NLP Recommendations and More
submitted by Brandi Gutierrez