The Predictive Role of Grapho-Morphological Knowledge in Reading Comprehension for Beginning-Level L2 Chinese Learners

Reading comprehension entails a set of distinct, yet interdependent cognitive, linguistic, and nonlinguistic processes. Previous second language (L2) Chinese studies have identified significant and positive impacts of grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and subcharacter (radical) levels on passage reading comprehension; however, little is known regarding how early L2 grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and radical levels jointly predict later L2 reading comprehension. This study aimed to fill this gap. One hundred and five beginning-level L2 Chinese collegiate learners were recruited, and completed two character-related and two radical-related tasks in Week 8, as well as one reading comprehension tasks in Week 18. The main findings, based on correlational and path analyses, suggested that L2 Chinese learners’ early character-level and radical-level grapho-morphological knowledge significantly predicted later reading comprehension, yet the interrelations among grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and radical levels were complex. Path analyses identified direct and indirect paths from early character-level grapho-morphological knowledge to later reading comprehension, as well as indirect paths from early radical-level grapho-morphological knowledge to later reading comprehension. Methodological and pedagogical implications for L2 Chinese reading research and practices are discussed.

The Effects of Reading Strategy Awareness on L2 Comprehension Performance among the Rungus in North Borneo

The Rungus are the indigenous people in Sabah, Malaysia. Malay as a second language and the primary instruction in schools seems inevitable. The study aims to determine the effects of reading strategies in the L2 reading comprehension tests on textual content and vocabulary. Participants consisted of twenty-six Form Four Rungus tribe pupils from Kudat Sikuati II Government Secondary School. The study used an ex-post facto research design. The researchers employed cognitive and metacognitive strategy questionnaires and two reading comprehension tests on L2 textual content and vocabulary. The researchers applied Cronbach alpha reliability statistics, paired sample test, and regression analysis. The study indicates that the L2 reading comprehension test on textual content and cognitive strategy were linearly related. Also, the factors related to L2 vocabulary in the reading comprehension test and metacognitive strategy are statistically significant. There is a very substantial relationship between past knowledge and reading comprehension among the participants. This study found that the use of cognitive strategies facilitates L2 reading comprehension with first language translation. The participants use translation strategies at a high level. However, they often use the metacognitive strategy more than the cognitive strategy. There is a significant positive relationship between metacognitive awareness and high-skilled readers’ performance. Low-level skilled readers choose the cognitive strategy. Meanwhile, the regression analysis between the L2 reading comprehension test on textual content and cognitive strategy revealed a positive association (β=.435) that is statistically significant (p<.05). The regression analysis between the L2 reading comprehension test on vocabulary and metacognitive strategy indicated a positive association (β=.440) and statistically significant (p<.05). Reading strategies facilitate students to understand the text, thereby improving their reading comprehension tasks. In addition to demonstrating positive implications on teaching students to read a second language, the findings are essential for teaching Malay language vocabulary. The schema theory employed in the study implicates that reading comprehension performance is generated from the interaction between top-down strategy (metacognitive) and bottom-up strategy (cognitive). A large-scale study could potentially reveal the use of translation strategy as a strategic trait associated with high-achievement readers or is, in fact, a bilingual additive.

The interplay of glossing with text difficulty and comprehension levels

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how glossing influences second language (L2)reading comprehension in relation to text difficulty and the two local and global meaning representations. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to read three easy, moderate, and difficult texts and, following each passage, answer twenty comprehension questions targeting local and global concepts in one of the two first-language-glossed and unglossed conditions. Half of the participants in each group were supposed to think aloud while reading. The results revealed a significant difference between the performance of glossed and unglossed groups on comprehension of local concepts in all three difficulty levels. However, the impact of glossing on comprehension of global concepts was significantly influenced by text difficulty. The qualitative analysis of think-aloud protocols suggested a substantial difference in glossing functionality on fluency between the easy and the difficult texts. Furthermore, it is suggested that revisiting the glossing effect in combination with text difficulty on the reading product and underlying processes might reconcile some divergent hypotheses on glossing impact on fluency.

Eye-tracking as a window into assembled phonology in native and non-native reading

The past 30 years of reading research has confirmed the importance of bottom-up processing. Rather than a psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman, 1967), reading is dependent on rapid, accurate recognition of written forms. In fluent first language (L1) readers, this is seen in the automatic activation of a word’s phonological form, impacting lexical processing (Perfetti & Bell, 1991; Rayner, Sereno, Lesch & Pollatsek, 1995). Although the influence of phonological form is well established, less clear is the extent to which readers are sensitive to the possible pronunciations of a word (Lesch & Pollatsek, 1998), derived from the varying consistency of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) (e.g., although ‘great’ has only one pronunciation, [ɡɹeɪt], the grapheme <ea> within it has multiple possible pronunciations: [i] in [plit] ‘pleat’, [ɛ] in [bɹɛθ] ‘breath’; Parkin, 1982). Further, little is known about non-native readers’ sensitivity to such characteristics. Non-native readers process text differently from L1 readers (Koda & Zehler, 2008; McBride-Chang, Bialystok, Chong & Li, 2004), with implications for understanding L2 reading comprehension (Rayner, Chace, Slattery & Ashby, 2006). The goal of this study was thus to determine whether native and non-native readers are sensitive to the consistency of a word’s component GPCs during lexical processing and to compare this sensitivity among readers from different L1s.

Using Tasks as a Pre-reading Procedure to Enhance L2 Reading Comprehension of Narrative Texts

Based on the assumption that preparing the reader before reading can foster reading comprehension, this research presents an empirical study in which the effects of pre-reading tasks on reading comprehension of narrative texts in English as a second language2 (L2) were investigated. Nine participants from a public high school took part in this investigation and to collect data, two Reading Comprehension Tests were fulfilled by participants right after reading each text. As stimuli, two narrative texts were selected. In the treatment condition, participants were exposed to the pre-reading tasks proposed by Willis and Willis (2011), which were adapted to fit the context of this research, prior to reading one of the narrative texts. In the control condition, the second text received a glossary at the end of the passage. The results provided evidence that pre-reading tasks are able to foster the reading comprehension of narrative texts in L2, since participants’ performance was higher in the treatment condition, endorsing previous research on reading. Furthermore, the results also go in line with Willis and Willis’ claim that pre-reading tasks are beneficial for reading comprehension of narrative texts.

Verbal Working Memory in Second Language Reading Comprehension: A Correlational Study

This study investigated the correlation and predictive capacity of verbal working memory (VWM) to the reading comprehension of children in their first language (L1) and second language (L2). The term VWM refers to a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold and manipulate verbal and auditory information temporarily. A subaim was to investigate the contribution of L2 linguistic knowledge in L2 reading comprehension. Sixty-three Grade 3 South African children completed a reading comprehension test and VWM assessment (forward span, backward span, and sentence repetition tasks). L2 participants completed a receptive language assessment to delineate whether their linguistic knowledge (L2 vocabulary and grammar knowledge) would be more predictive of L2 reading comprehension in comparison with VWM. Regression and correlation analyses revealed that VWM is not predictive of L1 or L2 reading comprehension. L2 linguistic knowledge, however, significantly correlates with L2 comprehension and VWM capacity, although it is not a significant predictor of L2 reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that reading in an L2 is a multidimensional skill where no single isolated variable can account for good versus poor reading comprehension.