Abstract
This study aimed to validate the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in L2 English readers with alphabetic and morphosyllabic L1 writing system backgrounds. Forty-five L2 English learners enrolled in American university bridge programs completed a set of tasks that measured real word decoding efficiency, pseudoword decoding efficiency, linguistic (listening) comprehension, passage reading comprehension, and word meaning inferencing. There were two major findings: (1) only pseudoword decoding efficiency predicted passage reading comprehension in learners with a morphosyllabic L1, whereas both pseudoword decoding efficiency and linguistic comprehension were significant predictors in learners with an alphabetic L1; (2) pseudoword decoding efficiency was a significant predictor of word meaning inferencing in learners with a morphosyllabic L1, and moderated the effect of real word decoding efficiency on word meaning inference in learners with an alphabetic L1. The findings indicate the complex relationships among word decoding, linguistic comprehension, and passage reading comprehension in adult L2 English learners.
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Notes
Arabic has been classified as an abjad or alphabetic language in previous research. We treat it as an alphabetic language in this study.
The statistical assumptions were checked to ensure the robustness of MANOVA test. The Shapiro–Wilk test suggested that every dependent variable was normally distributed (p > 0.05). Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances showed the observed error variances of the dependent variables were generally equal across groups, except that some violation was found for listening comprehension (p = 0.022) and real word decoding (p = 0.018). The Pearson correlations indicated that the dependent variables were correlated moderately with each other (see Table 2). Box’s Test of Equality of Covariance Matrices indicated that the covariance matrices between the groups were equal (p = 0.256). As a result, Pillais’ Trace was used for data interpretation.
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This research is funded by 2019 Language Learning Early Career Research Grant awarded to Dr. Sihui (Echo) Ke.
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Appendices
Appendix A
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Appendix B
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Appendix C
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Appendix D
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Appendix E
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Appendix F
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Li, X., Miller, R.T., Zhang, J. et al. Profiling Adult L2 Readers in English Bridge Programs: A Not-So-Simple View of L1 Effect. J Psycholinguist Res 52, 1471–1496 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09955-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09955-2