EDSL –617
L2 Vocabulary Acquisition
Final Paper:
The influences of non-alphabetic L1 orthography
on alphabetic L2 reading
Presented to
Professor Tom Cobb
By:
Kaki Chong
Student # 119728877
June 29, 2004
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Introduction
In Second Language Acquisition, first language (L1) influence on second
language (L2) reading has been investigated by many researchers in recent years. Most
literature on second language acquisition indicates that many L2 learners are likely to
transfer their L1 reading skills to their L2 reading. The different language structure and
writing systems of L2 learners’ first language such as phonology, orthography, semantic
and syntactic structure affect the processing of L2 word recognition and meaning. Many
researchers presumably suggest that the greater the distance between L1 and L2, the more
difficulties the learners will encounter in their L2 reading. For example, when one’s L1
has a non-alphabetic background, the transfer may cause him or her to encounter
difficulty in reading an alphabetic L2.
As a Chinese learner of English for many years, I have always been fascinated by
the process in which I have learned to read English, an alphabetic language, being rooted
as I am in the background of a non-alphabetic language. In studying theory, my
experience correlates with the findings of many studies. In the process of learning to read,
basic processing skills are required. Lower-order processing is considered to be one of
the foundational components of reading (Muljani, Koda & Moates, 1998). “Lower-order
processing refers to the point of fixation to lexical access” (Stanovich 1991, as cited in
Akamatsu, 1999, p. 381). Therefore, I am interested in understanding how the
orthography of non-alphabetic L1 influences alphabetic L2 reading, a phenomenon that
echoes my own experience. In this paper, I intend to look at the effects of the
orthographic features in non-alphabetic L1 on word recognition in English as an L2 and
how this process takes place. I have chosen to focus on three non-alphabetic languages in
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particular: Chinese, Korean and Japanese. The aim of this paper is to develop questions
for further study in this particular field. An introduction of the three non-alphabetic
languages will be followed by a discussion of their effects on English word recognition
processing.
The three focus languages
The writing systems of non-alphabetic and alphabetic languages select different
units of spoken language for mapping. Non-alphabetic language speakers are
logographic, meaning readers who mainly rely on the shape of characters for word
recognition when they read (Akamatsu, 1999). On the other hand, alphabetic language
speakers are considered to be phonographic, meaning readers who understand the
meaning of a written word through the way it sounds in speech. Chinese is logographic;
Korean is syllabic, and Japanese is a combination of logographic and syllabic. By
reviewing the literature on how the speakers of these languages read English, I will
explore to what degree the orthography of non-alphabetic L1 affects alphabetic L2
reading. Before discussing their influences on English reading, one must have a basic
grasp of the language structure of Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
Chinese Characters
Chinese characters have a very complex visual-orthographic structure compared
to English. They are composed of twenty-four basic strokes that are combined according
to certain positional constraints to form more than five hundred radical components,
which are likewise combined according to certain positional constraints to form
characters (Chinese Radical Position Frequency Dictionary, 1984 as cited in Wang, Kada
& Perfetti, 2003). Each character represents the meaning of a whole syllable, and the
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appearance of a character is often not predictably related to its pronunciation. Therefore,
the characters can be classified as logographic (Jackson et al. 1994 as cited in Jackson,
Chen, Goldsberry, Kim & Vanderwerff, 1999). Due to the complexity of character
formation, the visual distinctiveness between any two characters varies widely and the set
of characters as a whole is a daunting task of visual discrimination. Furthermore, the
correlation between visual form and pronunciation in Chinese characters is weak even at
the whole character level. Thus, two characters that have similar pronunciation often
share no visual resemblance (Wang et al., 2003). As a result, it is expected that the
semantic meaning of Chinese characters is assessed directly from its orthography rather
than phonology (Akamatsu 1999; Jackson et al. 1999, Koda 1989; Wong & Chen 1999;
Wang, Koda & Perfetti 2003).
Korean
The Korean writing system consists of Hanja and Hangul. Composed of
logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, the characters of the Hanja writing
system have the same graphic presentation and meaning as the original Chinese
characters. In terms of phonology, Hanja characters have approximately the same sound
of the corresponding Chinese characters but without tones. Hanja has rarely been used for
the past several decades. There are about one thousand eight hundred Hanja characters
still currently in use for educational purposes. Hanja is usually used for emphasis much
like using italics or bold type in English. It is also used to resolve homography in Korean
because each meaning of a Hangul homograph will map onto a different Hanja character.
Moreover, Hanja words directly represent meaning but not phonology; their meanings are
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assumed to be activated from orthography instead of phonology. In Korea, children begin
to learn Chinese Hanja only in middle school.
On the other hand, Hangul is considered to be alphabetic and was invented in the
15th century. Hangul has twenty-four letters and each represents a phoneme of the Korean
language. Although Hangul is an alphabet, the alphabetic characters are written like a
syllabary in which two or more letters are clustered into a syllabic block. Since Hangul is
fundamentally a phonetic script, each syllable block can be pronounced by analyzing it
into its constituent phonemes. Hangul is used more frequently than Hanja in Korea
because Korean grammatical morphemes can only be written in Hangul. In addition, the
alphabetic words in Hangul encode phonological information directly and
unambiguously. Therefore, the word recognition and meaning processing of Hangul are
assumed to be phonologic. Phonological information presumably plays a major role in
the processing of printed Hangul words. (Cho & Chen, 1999). In sum, Korean is a
language consisting of both logographic and syllabic systems.
Japanese
Japanese writing system is made up of kanji and kana scripts. Kana, are the
characters used to represent phonological units and restricted to only one pronunciation
for each character. The other system, kanji, is composed of logographic characters of
Chinese origin and used to represent morphemes of spoken Japanese. Each kanji
character has phonetic as well as semantic value. According to the Database for the 1,
945 Basic Japanese kanji characters (Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka & Kawakami
2001, 2002 as cited in Morita & Tamaoka 2002), approximately sixty percent of these
Kanji characters have two kinds of pronunciations: Kun-reading and On-reading. When
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Chinese characters were introduced in Japan, their pronunciations were adopted as Onreading, which as the sound of Chinese characters, into the Japanese written language.
About sixty-two percent of commonly used kanji characters were assigned a Japanese
pronunciation that is known as Kun-reading. Therefore, when reading two-kanji
compound words, appropriate pronunciation is determined by the specific combinations
of two or more kanji characters. Due to the complex characteristics of kanji
pronunciation, there is a common belief that phonological activation, the process by
which readers connect sound and character, is absent in kanji reading.
The relationship of orthography and phonology in reading nonalphabetic languages
In order to understand the way in which a non-alphabetic L1 influences the
cognitive processing in learning to read an alphabetic L2, it is necessary to understand the
relationship of orthography to phonology, print to sound, in reading literature. In the
process of word identification across writing systems, there are three underlying lexical
constituents that are examined by many research studies on reading. They are:
orthography, phonology, and semantics. Many researchers agree that there are two routes
in reading for meaning. Coltheart and his colleagues proposed a ‘dual-route model’ in
which there are two routes for translating printed words into sound (Coltheart, Curtis,
Atkins & Haller 1993;Wang et al. 2003). The basic concept of dual-route models of
reading is that skilled readers have two procedures for converting print to speech: called
‘lexical route’ or ‘direct route’, and the ‘non-lexical route’ or ‘assembled route’. In the
lexical route, words that readers have learned are represented as an entry in a mental
dictionary. Therefore, such words can be read aloud by accessing the lexical entry of the
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words from their printed form. The reader can then retrieve the pronunciation of the
words. In other words, if one takes this route in reading, he or she is able to recognize
how a word is pronounced on the basis of graphic information without reference to the
word’s phonology. According to Coltheart et al. (1993), Chinese reading is an example of
lexical route strategy. This reading strategy can be simply understood as a route from
orthography to semantic ( O  S).
The second route in the dual-route model is called the ‘non-lexical route’ or
‘assembled route’. The ‘non-lexical route’ refers to an indirect reading pathway for word
recognition from visual word recognition to a semantic system and then from semantic
system to spoken and written word production. This route can be represented as a
formula: OPS. This is the strategy usually used for English reading. Native English
readers usually perceive the orthography of the letter strings, and then reach the
pronunciation by the given phonological information and subsequently arrive at an
accurate semantic meaning of the word. Since the non-lexical route allows the correct
pronunciation of English words by obeying the phonetic rules of English, readers can also
read aloud any pronounceable letter strings and even gibberish through such a reading
route (Coltheart et al.1993; Koda 1989; Lesh & Pollatsek 1993; Wang et al. 2003).
The effects of orthography and phonology in reading non-alphabetic
and alphabetic language
Orthographic effects
Non-alphabetic orthography complicates the process of English word recognition
for Chinese, Korean and Japanese ESL learners. Due to their logographic and syllabary
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background, they are accustomed to replying on graphic information in their L1 reading.
Therefore, they are presumably considered to be sensitive to the visual shape of an
English word. According to Akamatsu (1999), the process of English word recognition
for Chinese and Japanese ESL learners is impaired by case manipulation. In Akamatus’
study, the fluent ESL readers of Persian (alphabetic L1), Chinese (non-alphabetic L1) and
Japanese (non-alphabetic and alphabetic L1) were asked to recognize genuine English
real words through case alternation (e.g CaSe AlteRnAtioN). The stimuli, real English
words, consisted of forty high-frequency and forty low-frequency words. In each set of
words, there were twenty regular and twenty exception words. Their speed of word
recognition was recorded. The result of this study indicated that the case alternation had a
smaller impact on the Persian ESL students’ word recognition than on that of the Chinese
and Japanese students. The Chinese and Japanese participants spent more time on
comprehending the case alternated English words than the Persian participants.
Such findings could be explained by the dual route reading strategy mentioned
before. Since Persian is an alphabetic language, phonology should play a role in reading.
Therefore, Persian speakers should rely on the non-lexical route, OPS, to decode a
word. In the study by Akamatsu, the phonological component in Persian helped speakers
to reduce the impairment of word recognition by distorted letter strings. Therefore, they
were able to recognize an English word faster than Chinese and Japanese speakers.
On the other hand, the non-alphabetic L1 background of Chinese and Japanese
speakers hindered the word recognition process. Since Chinese and Japanese are used to
reading through a lexical route, they are more sensitive to the visual shape of a word.
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Therefore, when the cases of the English words are altered, they needed a longer time to
recognize the words.
Similarly, the syllabary writing system of Hangul also impedes the English word
recognition by Korean speakers. According to Jackson et al. (1999), the Korean
university graduates recognized case altered English words significantly slower than the
eighth grade native English speakers. All these findings suggested that the orthography is
predominant in non-alphabetic reading and thus delays the process of English word
recognition of the ESL learners. Note that the slow speed of word recognition does not
represent semantic comprehension. Thus, whether the delayed word recognition of nonalphabetic L1 ESL learners would impede English reading comprehension is still
uncertain.
Phonological effects
Although many research studies have investigated the role of phonology in nonalphabetic and alphabetic reading, there are still an inconsistent pattern of results on this
issue. Many researchers believe that phonology plays a less dominant role in logographic
languages such as Chinese, Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji readings. They presume the
visual information given in these writing systems directly represent sound and meaning
for readers, and thus a lexical route is considered to be the prevalent reading strategy.
Such theory has been determined by a preponderance of studies in which nonalphabetical readers are usually less sensitive to English homophones than English native
speakers or other alphabetic language speakers. For example, Chinese speakers usually
make less error and take less time to identify English homophones than Japanese or
Korean. It is because they mainly rely on visual information to distinguish the meanings
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of English homophones rather than relying on the phonological information. As a result,
the lack of phonology activation in Chinese reading becomes the impediment to
peseudoword identification in English ( Koda, 1989; Wong & Chen, 1999; Wang et al.,
2003).
Moreover, generally speaking, Korean and Japanese speakers tend to be more
sensitive to homophone identification in English and are quicker to identify the
pseudowords than the Chinese speakers (Akamashu 1999; Koda 1984; Jackson et al.
1999; Wang et al 2003). This phenomenon can be explained by the different
orthographies of Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Since phonology is involved in Hangul
and Kana reading, Korean and Japanese are assumed to be familiar with alphabetic
writing systems. Therefore, when they are asked to identify English homophones and
pseudowords, they are more likely to activate the non-lexical route, which relies heavily
on phonological information in the reading process, instead of the lexical route
(Akamashu 1999; Koda 1984; Jackson et al. 1999; Lesch & Pollatsek, 1993; Wang et al
2003).
While many studies indicate that having an alphabetic language background helps
in identifying English words, Koda (1984) assumed that phonological recoding is a
necessary step to mediate the semantic coding in English. This assumption is based on
the fact that the mental lexicon of English is organized phonologically. As a result, the
non-lexical route should be activated in English reading (Koda, 1984). Hence, native
English speakers could easily identify English pesudowords and were more impaired in
English homophones identification compared with other non-alphabetic language
speakers (Akamashu 1999; Koda 1984; Jackson et al. 1999; Wang et al 2003).
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This is evidence further supports the argument that the involvement of phonology plays a
crucial role in the differentiation of alphabetic and non-alphabetic language reading.
However, recent research indicated that phonology activation does occur in nonalphabetic reading and thus suggests that the orthographic effect can no longer be the
main reason to explain the difficulty in English word recognition. The study by Cho &
Chen (1999) reported that phonology contributes to Hanja word recognition to a varying
degree according to the reading skills of Hanja readers. The findings of this study showed
that less skilled Hanja readers were more likely to have homophony effect, having errors
or long reaction time in word recognition due to the same sounds of two characters, but
not the skilled readers. In other words, if asking the less skilled and skilled Hanja readers
to identity English homophones, they may get different results in accuracy and reaction
time in the word recognition. The inconsistent findings on the role that phonology plays
for speakers of non-alphabetic and alphabetic languages seem to suggest that the level of
proficiency in the participants’ non-alphabetic L1 needs to be taken into account in
further studies. However, these studies verified that the reading strategy from the nonalphabetic L1 was transferred to the reading strategy for the alphabetic L2 alphabetic.
Is the word recognition modularized?
The different reading strategies being applied in non-alphabetic and alphabetic
reading gives rise to a question with respect to word recognition in L2: if two languages
in different orthographies such as English and Chinese require either lexical or nonlexical route in the process of word recognition, can either one of these mechanisms be
assumed to be fossilized in the reading unit of skilled readers? In other words, if a
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language’s orthographic characteristics of words are central to the formulation of the
processing mechanism for word recognition, the formulation of such processing in L2
essentially depends on the orthographic features of the L2 (Coltheart et al., 1993).
Stanovich (1991) also proposed that the information processing mechanism for word
recognition in the L2 is modularized, and thus fluent L2 readers should develop a specific
mechanism for recognizing L2 words (as cited in Akamatsu, 1999). For example, fluent
ESL learners should have specific input systems modularized for English word
recognition and thus the word processing would not be disturbed by the orthographic
features of their L1. Furthermore, one may hypothesize that the structure of the input
systems should be more or less the same across the board for fluent ESL readers. It is
because the orthographic features of English become central to the formulation of input
systems.
Recalling the findings in the study by Akamatsu (1999) that the Chinese and
Japanese readers had more difficulty in recognizing the cased altered English words, it
was found that they spent more time in the word recognizing process than the Persian
speakers because they were more sensitive to orthographic information as opposed to
phonological information. This result suggested that the deep word recognition
mechanism of the Chinese and Japanese speakers could not be modified. Therefore, in
spite of the high ESL proficiency of these participants, their word recognition process in
English was hindered. However, if the word recognition mechanism of one’s L1 is
modularized, should he or she also develop a specific word recognition mechanism for
his or her L2 and have it modularized? If the theory of modularization is valid, the nonalphabetic L1 ESL learners should have no difficulty in English word recognition
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because they deal with the recognition through a different route. In other words, there
should be no L1 reading strategy transferred. Therefore, the theory of modularization is
premature and merits further study to assess its veracity.
Suggestion and Conclusion
By looking at the effects of Chinese, Korean and Japanese on English word
recognition, I was able to understand how the discrepancies among these non-alphabetic
language systems affect alphabetic reading. The literature review deepened my
comprehension of how Chinese, Korean and Japanese speakers selectively take a lexical
route or non- lexical route in a varying degree according to the writing system of their
L1. Due to the logographic and syllabary background of the ESL learners in the three
groups, their sensitivity towards graphic information brings them difficulty in perceiving
the phonology manipulated English. Since most of the previous research investigated the
reaction time on word recognition processing, the findings of those studies cannot
completely represent the effect of a non-alphabetic L1 on alphabetic L2 reading. Perhaps
the meaning processing should also be taken into consideration by proceeding to a think
aloud protocol in further studies.
Since the orthography feature is predominant in non-alphabetic reading, Chinese,
Japanese and Korean ESL learners have difficulty accessing the non-lexical route in
English word recognition processing. However, some research suggested that the
proficiency of the participants’ L1 can determine the degree of the difficulty. Therefore, a
consistent level of L1 proficiency of the participants in similar research studies is needed.
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Some researchers such as Colheart and Akamastu presumed that the orthographic
effects on English reading is due to language modularization. Chinese, Korean and
Japanese learners are not able to modify the modularized word recognition mechanism of
their L1 and thus they encounter difficulties in English word recognition. However, I
have reservations for such a theory and think that it needs further investigation. For an
example I mentioned before the problem of modularization.
In conclusion, this literature review allows me to develop questions for further
study on the effects of a non-alphabetic L1 on alphabetic L2 reading. Besides the
questions on research design, a possible pedagogical question is whether or not teaching
non-alphabetic L1 ESL learners the application of a non-lexical route will be helpful in
their English lexical learning. Would the instructional background of the non-alphabetic
speakers such as their late exposure to English play a role in word recognition
fossilization or development? Finally, I hope that there will be future studies that would
provide not only theory but also the pedagogical implications on the issue.
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References
Akamatsu, N. (1999). The effects of first language orthographic features on word
recognition processing in English as a second language. Reading and Writing:
A Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 381-403.
Cho.,J.R., & Chen, H.C. (1999). Orthographic and activation in the semantic processing
of Korean Hanja and Hangul. Language And Cognitive Processes, 14, 481-502.
Coltheart, M., Curtis, B., Atkins, P., & Haller, M. (1993). Models of reading alound:
dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing apprachese. Psychological Review,
100, 589-608.
Jackson, N.E., Chen, H., Goldsberry. L., Kim, & Vanderwerff, C. (1999). Effects of
Variations in orthographic information on Asian and American readers’
English text reading. Reading and Writing A Interdisciplinary Journal,
11, 345-379.
Kinoshita, S. (1998). The role of phonology in Japanese: or why I don’t hear myself
when I reading Japanese. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal,
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Koda, L. (1989). The use of L1 reading strategies in L2 reading: effects of L1
orthographic structures on L2 phonological recoding strategies. Second Language
Acquisition, 12, 393-410.
Lesch, M.F., & Pollatsek, A. (1993). Automatic access of semantic information by
phonological codes in visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 285-294.
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Morita, A. & Tamaoka, K. (2002). Phonological involvement in the processing of
Japanese at the lexical and sentence levels. Reading and Writing: An
Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 633-651.
Muljani, D., Koada, K., & Moates, D. R. (1998). The development of word recognition in
a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 99-113.
Wang, M., Koda, K. & Perfetti, A. (2003). Alphabetic and nonalphabetic L1 effects in
English word identification :a comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2
Learners. Cognition, 87, 129-149.
Wong, K.F.E., & Chen, H.C. (1999). Orthographic and phonological processing in
reading Chinese text: evidence from eye fixations. Language And Cognitive
Processes, 14, 467-480.
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