Can L1 reading instruction affect L2 listening ability?

Richard Pemberton

School of Education, University of Nottingham

Language Research Day, LSRI, UoN22 April 2009

The problem

In six experimental studies (Pemberton 2003), HK Intermediate-level learners consistently recognised at most 3 out of every 4 of the most frequent words of English in BBC news itens

Recognition rate for content words no higher than for grammatical words

Comprehension likely to be severely compromised

Why is this a problem?

Most of the participants had had 12-15 years of English-medium education

All were: studying/working in an English-medium

education encountering English on a daily basis familiar with the most frequent words of

English

The idea

Participants had misheard abducted as ‘of doctors’ etc.

Would a more phonics-based approach to the teaching of reading help HK students to recognise abducted as a verb form?

No direct evidence of the extent of phonics teaching in HK English classrooms. But could the teaching of pinyin in mainland China be the key? Are mainland students better than HK students at English spoken word recognition?

Phonological awareness (PA)

The ability to perceive, analyse and manipulate speech sounds

PA tasks: deleting, counting, blending, matching etc:

Matching: e.g. which word has the same beginning sound as cat, rhyme as cat, final sound as cat?

Strands in Phonological awareness research

Relationship between PA and reading ability

Relationship between reading experience and PA

Previous research: L1 reading and L1 phonological awareness

Cheung et al (2001)

60 children from HK, 60 from Guangzhou (half of each pre-readers, half readers)

Guangzhou readers significantly better at matching L1 onsets and codas

Previous research: L1 reading and L2 reading

Jackson et al (1999)

Students from HK (10), Taiwan (48), Korea (28) read English texts silently (reading speed) and aloud

No L2 advantage for those learning to read their L1 (Taiwanese and Koreans) using alphabetic system over HK students

Previous research: L1 reading and L2 phonological awareness

Holm & Dodd (1996)

40 students at Australian university (incl 10 HK, 10 mainland China)

HK students markedly weaker than others on all the PA tasks and reading of pseudowords

Previous research: L1 reading and L1 phonological awareness/speech processing Cheung & Chen (2004)

30 HK and 36 Guangzhou students (all Cantonese speakers)

Pinyin group significantly outperformed HK group at L1 PA tasks and reacted significantly quicker to phonologically related L1 primes (syllables) in shadowing task

Previous research: L1 reading and L2 phonological awareness

Cheung (2007)

60 HK students

Ability to read L2 passages aloud corresponded to PA and phoneme discrimination - but not with listening comprehension

Preliminary research:spoken word recognition test

100 single words taken from the 1K, 2K and 3K frequency levels likely to be known to the students

Words read aloud and students asked to write down what they heard

Preliminary research:participants

9 HK and 11 mainland Chinese students, postgrads at UoN

HK group had started to learn English at kindergarten, mainland group at junior secondary school (with 2 exceptions)

Ave IELTS Listening scores: HK 7.7, mainland 6.6

Preliminary research:results

Mis-transcriptions Target word Hong Kong students (n=9) Mainland Chinese students

(n=11) bake baik, *back, *beack days / daze dayze, *death mate *made mait, *maits, *mates nail nale, *knell, *nill phrase *pharse, *phase, *frace, *flace fraze (x2), *freeze, *frace scale scail, *skell, *skill his hiz burst birst, *burse, *brust, *breast,

*brused birst (x2), *bourst, *bust

urge *earch, *eage earge (x2), *age her hur palm *paml, *pump, *parb parm, *pam, *pum, *pulm (x2) climb clime, *clim, *claim fold *float, *thoat, *throw, *vote,

*frost fould, *ford (x2), *fords, *fault (x2), *fort

No. of phonologically accurate mis-transcriptions

1 16

No. of students producing phonologically accurate mis-transcriptions

1 7

Ave no. of cases where Ss failed to recognise phonemes, by syllable part

Hong Kong group (n=9)

Mainland group (n=11)

Onsets (k=89) 4.2 1.1 Rhymes (k=100) 12.7 12.2 Codas (k=79) 8.22 5.55

Caveats

Tiny sample No account taken of vocabulary size or

density of phonological neighbourhoods Likely to be great variation within

mainland Chinese population Likely to be variety of practice within

mainland China in terms of teaching of pinyin and English phonics (ditto in HK re phonics)

Future research: Stage 1

Data collection from HK/Ningbo/UoN re PA and listening difficulties

Development of online training materials (e.g. word recognition from mini-lecture chunks)

Future research: Stage 2

More in-depth, longitudinal data collection

Further development of online materials

Potential applications

Recommendations for teaching of pinyin

English training program for adults (PA, automaticity in word recognition etc)

Comparable age-normed PA tests across three languages

References

Cheung, H. 2007. The role of phonological awareness in mediating between reading and listening to speech. Language and Cognitive Processes 22(1): 130-154.

Cheung, H. & Chen, H-C. 2004. Early orthographic experience modifies both phonological awareness and on-line speech processing. Language and Cognitive Processes 19(1): 1-28.

Cheung, H. Chen, H.C., Lai, C.Y., Wong, O.C. & Hills, M. 2001. The development of phonological awareness: effects of spoken language experiences and orthography. Cognition 81: 227-241.

Holm, A. & Dodd, B. 1996. The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English literacy. Cognition 59: 119-147.

Jackson, N.E., Chen, H., Goldsberry, L., Kim, A. & Vanderwerff, C. 1999. Effects of variation in orthographic information on Asian and American readers’ English text reading. Reading and Writing 11: 345-379.

Pemberton, R. 2003. Spoken word recognition and L2 listening performance: an investigation of the ability of Hong Kong learners to recognise the most frequent words of English when listening to news broadcasts. PhD thesis. University of Wales, Swansea.