Relationship among Chinese (L1) Phonological Sensitivity, English (L2) Phonological Sensitivity, and English Word Reading among EFL Taiwanese Fifth Graders

• Main Authors: Chiu, Wen-Lin, 邱雯琳
• Other Authors: 郭鳳蘭
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/9rg7q5

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 106 === Previous studies have highlighted the important role of learners’ performance in L1 phonological sensitivity (PS) plays in their L1 word reading performance. Recently, a great deal of research centers on the cross-languages relationship among learners’ performance in L1 PS, L2 PS, and L2 word reading performance. Most previous studies focused on examining PS transfer between two alphabetic languages. However, only a few studies exploring the relationship among learners’ performance in the non-alphabetic L1 PS, the alphabetic L2 PS, and the L2 word reading. Therefore, the present study examined the relationship among learners’ performance in the Chinese L1 PS, the English L2 PS, and the English word reading of EFL Taiwanese 5th graders. The participants included 183 5th graders from nine classes of seven schools located in central Taiwan. Three measurements, including the Chinese non-word phonological sensitivity test, the English non-word phonological sensitivity test, and the English non-word reading test were administered to the participants. The participants’ performance in phonological sensitivity was assessed by parallel tasks, including the blending tasks, the segmentation tasks, and the deletion tasks in both the Chinese phonological sensitivity test and the English phonological sensitivity test. The results of this study are listed as follows. First, learners’ performance in the three Chinese onset-rime awareness tasks moderately correlated with their performance in the three English onset-rime awareness tasks (r (181) = .299, p < .01), especially between their performance in the Chinese onset-rime segmentation task and their English onset-rime deletion task performance, and between their performance in the Chinese onset-rime deletion task and their English onset-rime segmentation task and the English onset-rime deletion task performance. Second, among the three Chinese onset-rime awareness tasks, only their performance in the Chinese onset-rime deletion task was the best predictor of their English word reading performance (10.7%). Third, their performance in the English onset-rime deletion task was the best predictor (30.4%) of their English word reading performance, followed by their performance in the English onset-rime segmentation task and the English onset-rime blending task.