2024 International Literacy Association's Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award

This study examines the cross-linguistic transfer of L1 word-form analysis skills (phonological, orthographic, and morphological processing skills) to the corresponding L2 skills and L2 word recognition, and how their transfer is moderated by the learners’ L2 linguistic knowledge among Chinese-speaking adult English learners. The study found that these three skills have different patterns of cross-linguistic transfer and exhibit significant non-linear differences in their transfer levels before and after critical levels of L2 linguistic knowledge. My dissertation focuses on a very longstanding question in both second language and reading research: That is, whether a struggle in second language reading is a language problem or a reading problem (Alderson, 1984). Essentially, I wanted to pinpoint the sources of difficulties second language readers have when they are learning to read. When learners are not successful, is it because they do not have sufficient linguistic knowledge in the target language, or is it that they have not yet developed sufficient reading skills? I addressed this question from a cross-linguistic perspective. In fact, cross-linguistic transfer is at the center of all my research. I work with adults who have already become highly literate in their first language. When human beings are learning something new, we do not want to start from scratch. Rather, we want to lean on what we have already learned. This is the case for learning to read in a second language. We want to use experiences and knowledge we have already mastered in our first language. Therefore, the question that I examined in my dissertation is how second language linguistic knowledge and first language reading skills affect Chinese-speaking adults learning to read in English. My dissertation examines the lower-level process of reading, word recognition. Word recognition is the process of reading and recognizing written words, and includes three sub-level skills: phonological, morphological, and orthographic processing skills. To explore the relationships between first language reading skills, second language linguistic knowledge, and second language word recognition, I collected data from 204 college students in China, all learning English as a second language. The participants completed a series of tasks measuring their word recognition skills at the phonological, morphological, and orthographic levels in their first language (Chinese) and their second language (English) as well as tasks measuring their English linguistic knowledge, and their general cognitive ability. There are two important findings that emerged from data patterns. First, the three sets of word recognition skills transfer cross-linguistically, but to a different degree. For example, phonological processing skill is the skill of manipulating the phonological information in a written word. This skill is less constrained by second language linguistic knowledge. Learners at different second language proficiency levels could draw upon their first language phonological processing skills to facilitate second language word recognition. By contrast, orthographic processing skill, which is the processing of the written conventions of a given writing system, is more language-specific. It is very difficult for learners to transfer the orthographic processing skill they have already developed in their first language, Chinese, to their second language, English. Morphological processing, which is the processing of the smallest meaningful units in words, lies in between. It transfers across languages. However, its transfer is indirect and moderated by the corresponding skills in the second language. For orthographic processing, I measured the participants' understanding of the conventions in that writing system. In English, I presented the participants with a string of letters that were not real English words. Participants had to decide whether the string looked like or could be a real English word. There were 80 items in the task. For example, they were required to decide whether “eflsti” looks like a real English word. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in a given word. For example, “classroom” is one word with two morphemes: class and room, while the word “mushroom” is monomorphemic. I asked my participant to segment stimuli, like “classroom,” into smaller meaningful units. If they could segment items correctly, that indicates that they understand that the word is made up of two smaller meaningful units. There were 32 items in the task. I think that the design of my graduate program in the Department of Languages, Cultures, & Applied Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University supported me and prepared me for my dissertation and my overall research agenda very well. We have a 4-year Ph.D. program. It is designed so that students accomplish one milestone per year. In the first year, we do a literature synthesis to develop a solid theoretical understanding of the topic of interest. In the second year, we are required to conduct an empirical study which serves as the pilot for the dissertation. And then in the third year, we complete the dissertation proposal and form a dissertation committee. The last year is the dissertation. The program is designed very rigorously. It guides students through every single step of finishing a dissertation with just the right amount of scaffolding. The program also provides us with a lot of teaching experiences. My teaching helped me to work with my target population, second language learners. I could observe the difficulties, the challenges, and the successes students have in learning a second language. I could also practice theories and principles I learned in my coursework in my teaching. So, I had both a bottom-up and a top-down approach combined to build my understanding of L2 reading development. The second direction is meta-research or research on research. As a quantitative researcher, my past research experiences inspire me to reflect on how research is conducted and interpreted. I have conducted several meta-analytical reviews that examine the overall effect sizes of the correlations among different reading measures across languages. In the future, I envision expanding my meta-analytical work to other phases of quantitative research including methods (especially p-hacking), reporting, and reproducibility. Overall, I would like to help promote a more open-sourced, equitable, and accessible reading research community. Sharon Walpole (corresponding author) is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA; email: [email protected]. Xiaomeng Li is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, USA; email: [email protected].