The effects of phonological awareness of Zulu‐speaking children learning to spell in English: A study of cross‐language transfer

Background. Emergent bilingual Zulu–English speaking children in South Africa have spoken but no written proficiency in Zulu (L1), yet are required to learn to spell English (L2) via English‐only literacy instruction. Little research exists on emergent bilingual's phonological awareness (PA) and spelling development, with no L1 formal literacy instruction. Thus, whether PA in a L1 impacts on literacy acquisition in the L2 remains unclear. Aims. Performance on monolingual PA, monolingual and emergent bilingual spelling was compared. In addition, PA and spelling in emergent bilingual Zulu–English speakers was explored to ascertain cross‐language transfer relationships. Sample. Thirty emergent bilingual Zulu–English and thirty monolingual English children in grade 2 participated. Method. Emergent bilinguals were assessed on Zulu PA, Zulu and English spelling skills. Monolinguals were assessed on English PA and English spelling skills. Results. Emergent bilinguals had more Zulu PA levels related to spelling English tasks than to spelling Zulu tasks, and both Zulu PA and Zulu spelling were positively related to English spelling tasks. Significant differences were found between L1 Zulu and English phoneme and rime PA levels, and L1 English and L2 English spelling tasks. Conclusions. Findings support the language‐universal hypothesis that L1 PA is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. In emergent bilinguals, both Zulu spoken proficiency and English‐only literacy instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used to spell within the L1 and the L2. Rime and phoneme PA and spelling skills in Zulu/English rely on language‐specific orthographic knowledge.     

“Living the Literate Life”: How Teachers Make Connections Between the Personal and Professional Literate Selves

This study examines teachers' beliefs about themselves as literate people and how those beliefs translate into classroom literary practice. Using a multi-method approach, it explores the private literate selves (via diary, survey, and interviews) of twelve K–12 teachers and establishes a foundational understanding of the influence of the social and personal nature of literacy on teacher support for literacy in the classroom and how teachers' personal literacy practices are made public to classroom learners. Results indicate that literacy played an important functional role in the lives of all 12 teachers. There was variability in the prominence of literacy for pleasure in the teachers' lives. In addition, there was variability in whether and in what ways teachers made their literacy practices public for their students. Implications for teacher education and professional development programs are offered.     

An investigation of high school social studies teachers' understandings of vocabulary teaching and learning

This qualitative study focused on high school social studies teachers' understandings of and perspectives about vocabulary acquisition and instruction. The research questions were the following: (1) What do high school social studies teachers understand about vocabulary instruction? and (2) How do high school social studies teachers support vocabulary learning? Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 25 high school social studies teachers. Findings indicate that external factors shaped instructional decision-making for teaching vocabulary, teachers' belief systems guided instructional choices, and the diverse needs of students called for differentiated instruction not only for English language learners but also for all students given the unique nature of the language of social studies.     

Teachers' Ratings of Working Memory in English Language Learners: Do Laboratory Measures Predict Classroom Analogues?

This study investigated the relationship between teachers' classroom ratings of working memory (WM) and laboratory measures of WM of English language learners (ELLs) in the elementary grades. Multilevel modeling was used to identify whether teacher ratings accurately predicted ELL children's performance on WM tasks. The results indicated that teachers' ratings of WM were predicted by isolated components of WM even when measures of achievement, vocabulary and gender representation were entered into the analysis. Teacher ratings of WM were predictive of student performance on latent measures of Spanish short‐term memory and the executive component of WM. Entering inattention ratings into the analysis partialed out the influence of the executive component of WM, while leaving variance related to a language‐specific storage system as a significant predictor of teachers' classroom ratings of WM. The results suggest that classroom ratings of WM provide a valid analogue of student laboratory performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-Language Transfer of Early Literacy Skills: An Examination of Young Learners in a Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Elementary School

The present study investigates the relationship between first-language literacy skills and the acquisition of second-language reading skills for K–2 grade students enrolled in a Spanish–English two-way bilingual immersion program. Students received literacy instruction in their first language and oral language support in their second language. One hundred seventy-four students were administered subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson (Woodcock-Munoz) in English and Spanish. Findings support the theory of cross-linguistic transfer from the first language to the second language across both constrained and unconstrained literacy skills for both monolingual and bilingual students included in this study. However, findings also suggest interesting differences across language groups.     

Literacy acquisition in multilingual educational contexts: Evidence from Coastal Kenya

Literacy is a powerful tool against poverty, leading to further education and vocational success. In sub‐Saharan Africa, schoolchildren commonly learn in two languages—African and European. Multiple early literacy skills (including phonological awareness and receptive language) support literacy acquisition, but this has yet to be empirically tested in sub‐Saharan Africa, where learning contexts are highly multilingual, and children are often learning to read in a language they do not speak at home. We use longitudinal data from 1,100 schoolchildren spanning three groups of native languages [Mijikenda languages (Digo, Duruma, Chonyi, and Giriama), Kiswahili, Kikamba] in coastal Kenya (language of instruction: Kiswahili and English). We find that baseline phonological awareness and receptive language are differentially important in predicting literacy skills in English and in Kiswahili, and these relations are moderated by the degree of shared cross‐linguistic features between home and school languages. Importantly, the relative importance of these factors changes over development. Implications for language development and literacy acquisition in linguistically diverse contexts are discussed.     

Gains in teacher-child interaction quality and children's school readiness skills: Does it matter where teachers start?

Teachers' initial level of interactional quality at the beginning of a school year (baseline) was examined as a potential moderating factor in the relation between change in interactional quality and change in children's school readiness skills throughout an academic year. Participants were 269 preschool teachers and 1179 children from low-income backgrounds. Teacher-child interactions and children's school readiness skills were measured in the fall and spring of the preschool year. Overall, improvements in the quality of teacher-child interactions across the year were not significantly related to children's skill development. Three important findings emerged; two main effects and one interaction effect. Gains in teachers' instructional support across the year were related to children's literacy and inhibitory control development. Additionally, the relation between gains in teachers' emotional support and gains in children's inhibitory control was moderated by teachers' initial level of emotional support at the beginning of the year. These findings provide limited evidence for the need to consider teachers' initial level of quality and how much they change across the year in understanding the relation between quality of teacher-child interactions and children's skill development.     

Cross language learning disabilities and verbal versus spatial memory

The research reported in this talk involves comparisons of verbal and spatial memory tasks across groups of children (and adults) with different types of learning difficulties. The research focuses on children with literacy acquisition problems and investigates whether such problems are related to specific areas of deficit. In the first piece of research, children with dyslexia (literacy learning problems) and dyspraxia (motor deficits) were contrasted on measures of memory (for example, tasks that required the retention of sequences of verbal material or spatial movements) and additional measures of literacy (reading and spelling), phonological (awareness of sounds within words) and motor (fine and gross motor tasks) functioning. The data were consistent with a dissociation between tasks/groups such that dyslexics showed weak phonological processing but intact visuo-spatial processing, whereas children with dyspraxia showed weaknesses on task involving visuo-spatial information, but average levels of performance on tasks that required phonological processing. Similar results were identified amongst adult groups, consistent with a deviant level of functioning rather than a developmental delay. A second line of research contrasted children with or without literacy problems across language backgrounds (English, Arabic, Chinese and bilingual children). Consistent with the dyslexia data, children with poor English literacy skills showed weaknesses in verbal/phonological memory tasks but not in visuo-spatial memory. However, for Chinese-language children, visuo-spatial memory differed between good and poor literacy learners, but there was little evidence for verbal memory differences. In contrast, the Arabic and bilingual children showed differences in both verbal and visuo-spatial areas, although the evidence was consistent with enhanced visual/spatial skills amongst the good literacy groups, rather than poor literacy children showing weaknesses in those tasks. These data suggest that the influence of memory skills on learning may vary with the language of instruction. A final line of enquiry considers whether teaching strategies to children with learning difficulties may overcome some of the identified memory deficits and lead to better levels of learning. English language children with learning difficulties were taught visual and verbal strategies to support retention of materials in short-term memory tasks. In the majority of cases, learning was improved when it focused on visuo-spatial strategies but not when verbal strategies were used. These data support the relationship between learning difficulties and different aspects of short-term memory that may lead to poor levels of learning. It also presents evidence that memory (particularly those related to visuo-spatial) processes are influenced by the context within which learning is taking place, both in terms of the language of instruction and the strategies used to support learning. For some children with educational difficulties based around language-related deficits, visuo-spatial strategies may support acquisition.     

The Role of Parent Education and Parenting Knowledge in Children's Language and Literacy Skills among White,Black, and Latino Families

This study investigated the role of parenting knowledge of infant development in children's subsequent language and pre‐literacy skills among White, Black and Latino families of varying socioeconomic status. Data come from 6,150 participants in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort. Mothers' knowledge of infant development was measured when children were 9 months old, and child language and pre‐literacy skills were measured during the fall of the preschool year prior to Kindergarten when children were approximately four years old. Mothers' knowledge of infant development was uniquely related to both maternal education and race/ethnicity. Reported sources of parenting information/advice also varied by education and race/ ethnicity and were related to parenting knowledge. Further, controlling for demographic factors, parenting knowledge partially mediated the relation between parent education and child language and pre‐literacy skills, and this relation differed by race/ethnicity. One way to eliminate socioeconomic status achievement gaps in children's early language and literacy skills may be to focus on parents' knowledge of child development, particularly in Latino families. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Literacy acquisition influences children's rapid automatized naming

Previous research has established that learning to read improves children's performance on reading‐related phonological tasks, including phoneme awareness (PA) and nonword repetition. Few studies have investigated whether literacy acquisition also promotes children's rapid automatized naming (RAN). We tested the hypothesis that literacy acquisition should influence RAN in an international, longitudinal population sample of twins. Cross‐lagged path models evaluated the relationships among literacy, PA, and RAN across four time points from pre‐kindergarten through grade 4. Consistent with previous research, literacy showed bidirectional relationships with reading‐related oral language skills. We found novel evidence for an effect of earlier literacy on later RAN, which was most evident in children at early phases of literacy development. In contrast, the influence of earlier RAN on later literacy was predominant among older children. These findings imply that the association between these two related skills is moderated by development. Implications for models of reading development and for dyslexia research are discussed.     

Early Literacy Skills and English Language Learners: an Analysis of Students In A Title I School

This article examined student literacy assessments in light of students' levels of English language proficiency. The study supported the hypotheses that a student's level of language proficiency positively predicted their DIBELS Composite score at the beginning, middle, and end of kindergarten by utilizing a simple linear regression. An ANOVA discovered differences in scores between native English speakers and multiple levels of English Language Learners at the beginning of the school year, whereas no significant differences were found at the end of Kindergarten. Future research analyses regarding the effects of a student's level of language proficiency on literacy assessments are included.     

Words with Consistent Diachronic Usage Patterns are Learned Earlier: A Computational Analysis Using Temporally Aligned Word Embeddings

In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations and the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood-level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language.     

Alphabetic and nonalphabetic L1 effects in English word identification: a comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners

Different writing systems in the world select different units of spoken language for mapping. Do these writing system differences influence how first language (L1) literacy experiences affect cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2)? Two groups of college students who were learning to read English as a second language (ESL) were examined for their relative reliance on phonological and orthographic processing in English word identification: Korean students with an alphabetic L1 literacy background, and Chinese students with a nonalphabetic L1 literacy background. In a semantic category judgment task, Korean ESL learners made more false positive errors in judging stimuli that were homophones to category exemplars than they did in judging spelling controls. However, there were no significant differences in responses to stimuli in these two conditions for Chinese ESL learners. Chinese ESL learners, on the other hand, made more accurate responses to stimuli that were less similar in spelling to category exemplars than those that were more similar. Chinese ESL learners may rely less on phonological information and more on orthographic information in identifying English words than their Korean counterparts. Further evidence supporting this argument came from a phoneme deletion task in which Chinese subjects performed more poorly overall than their Korean counterparts and made more errors that were phonologically incorrect but orthographically acceptable. We suggest that cross-writing system differences in L1s and L1 reading skills transfer could be responsible for these ESL performance differences.     

Effects of past language experience and present language context on the shape bias in Spanish–English bilingual children

English‐monolingual children develop a shape bias early in language acquisition, such that they more often generalize a novel label based on shape than other features. Spanish‐monolingual children, however, do not show this bias to the same extent (Hahn & Cantrell, 2012). Studying children who are simultaneously learning both Spanish and English presents a unique opportunity to further investigate how this word‐learning bias develops. Thus, we asked how Spanish–English bilingual children (M_age = 21.31 months) perform in a novel‐noun generalization (NNG) task, specifically examining how past language experience (i.e. language exposure and vocabulary size) and present language context (i.e. whether the NNG task was conducted in Spanish or English) influence the strength of the shape bias. Participants completed the NNG task either entirely in English (N = 16) or entirely in Spanish (N = 16), as well as language understanding tasks in both English and Spanish to ensure that they understood what the experimenter was asking them to do. Parents completed a language exposure survey and vocabulary checklists in Spanish and English. There was a significant interaction between condition and choice type: Bilingual children in the English condition showed a shape bias in the NNG task, but bilingual children in the Spanish condition showed no reliable biases. No measures of past language experience were related to NNG task performance. These results suggest that when learning new words, bilingual children are attuned to the regularities of the present language context, and prior language experiences may play a more secondary role.     

Production of Inflected Novel Words in Older Adults With and Without Dementia

While cognitive changes in aging and neurodegenerative disease have been widely studied, language changes in these populations are less well understood. Inflecting novel words in a language with complex inflectional paradigms provides a good opportunity to observe how language processes change in normal and abnormal aging. Studies of language acquisition suggest that children inflect novel words based on their phonological similarity to real words they already know. It is unclear whether speakers continue to use the same strategy when encountering novel words throughout the lifespan or whether adult speakers apply symbolic rules. We administered a simple speech elicitation task involving Finnish-conforming pseudo-words and real Finnish words to healthy older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to investigate inflectional choices in these groups and how linguistic variables and disease severity predict inflection patterns. Phonological resemblance of novel words to both a regular and an irregular inflectional type, as well as bigram frequency of the novel words, significantly influenced participants' inflectional choices for novel words among the healthy elderly group and people with AD. The results support theories of inflection by phonological analogy (single-route models) and contradict theories advocating for formal symbolic rules (dual-route models).     

Perceptual Bias in Speech Error Data Collection: Insights from Spanish Speech Errors

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors “in the wild” seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.     

Language-experience facilitates discrimination of /d-th/ in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of English

To trace how age and language experience shape the discrimination of native and non-native phonetic contrasts, we compared 4-year-olds learning either English or French or both and simultaneous bilingual adults on their ability to discriminate the English /d-th/ contrast. Findings show that the ability to discriminate the native English contrast improved with age. However, in the absence of experience with this contrast, discrimination of French children and adults remained unchanged during development. Furthermore, although simultaneous bilingual and monolingual English adults were comparable, children exposed to both English and French were poorer at discriminating this contrast when compared to monolingual English-learning 4-year-olds. Thus, language experience facilitates perception of the English /d-th/ contrast and this facilitation occurs later in development when English and French are acquired simultaneously. The difference between bilingual and monolingual acquisition has implications for language organization in children with simultaneous exposure.     

Motion-Verb Generalizations in English and Spanish: Influences of Language and Syntax

English and Spanish speakers differ in the ways they talk about motion events, but how have these different modes of expression become instantiated as differing generalizations—as syntactic rules, lexical patterns, or both? In two studies, we asked English- and Spanish-speaking adults to interpret novel motion verbs presented in three types of sentence frames. Overall, English speakers expected novel verbs to encode the manner of motion, whereas Spanish speakers expected the verbs to encode the path of motion. The sentence frames also significantly affected how the speakers interpreted the novel verbs. We conclude that speakers of different languages represent their different generalizations about the composition of motion verbs both lexically and syntactically, and discuss how these generalizations might be important for issues of language acquisition and linguistic relativity.     

Brain bases of morphological processing in Chinese‐English bilingual children

Can bilingual exposure impact children's neural circuitry for learning to read? To answer this question, we investigated the brain bases of morphological awareness, one of the key spoken language abilities for learning to read in English and Chinese. Bilingual Chinese‐English and monolingual English children (N = 22, ages 7–12) completed morphological tasks that best characterize each of their languages: compound morphology in Chinese (e.g. basket + ball = basketball) and derivational morphology in English (e.g. re + do = redo). In contrast to monolinguals, bilinguals showed greater activation in the left middle temporal region, suggesting that bilingual exposure to Chinese impacts the functionality of brain regions supporting semantic abilities. Similar to monolinguals, bilinguals showed greater activation in the left inferior frontal region [BA 45] in English than Chinese, suggesting that young bilinguals form language‐specific neural representations. The findings offer new insights to inform bilingual and cross‐linguistic models of language and literacy acquisition.     

TV Viewing Compared to Book Reading and Toy Playing Reduces Responsive Maternal Communication with Toddlers and Preschoolers

This study compared the amount and style of maternal communication with toddlers and preschoolers while mother–child pairs watched TV, read books, and played with toys. We found that mother–child communication was less frequent and less verbally responsive when dyads viewed TV compared with when they read books, and in many cases, when they played with toys. In addition, some forms of maternal responsiveness were positively associated with indicators of youngsters' emergent literacy. Mothers' use of directive language was negatively related to emergent literacy. These findings suggest that TV co‐viewing produces a relatively detrimental communication environment for young children, while shared book reading encourages effective mother–child exchanges.