Abstract
The present study examined whether an improvement in English as a second language causes an improvement among poor readers in Hebrew as the first language. This assumption is named in the present study “The Cognitive-Retroactive Transfer (CRT) hypothesis of linguistic skills”. The participants were 20 sixth-grade poor readers from Israeli elementary schools, with Hebrew as their first language, and who learn English as their second language. All the students in the program participated in small group instruction sessions that emphasized linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in the second language (English). The program, which was administered over a 5-month period, involved approximately 40 hours of contact with a trained instructor. The participants were administered various tests which measured their basic linguistic skills in English as well as in Hebrew. The tests were as follows: phonological awareness, phonological processing, word identification, reading fluency, reading comprehension, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, orthographic knowledge and spelling. The tests in both languages were given to the participants before and after the intervention program. The test results indicated significant differences both in English and in Hebrew before and after the intervention program for all linguistic skills (except orthographic knowledge). The findings provide scientific support for the Cognitive-Retroactive Transfer (CRT) hypothesis, which means that an improvement in linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in a second language will be expected to give rise to a similar improvement in the first language as well. The results are discussed in light of the findings in the literature as well as suggestions for future research.
Highlights
It is generally accepted that poor readers suffer significant difficulties in learning a second language (Geva, YaghoubZadeh, & Schuster, 2000)
The reason for the difficulties being that the same meta-linguistic skills related to literacy, such as phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, syntactic awareness, etc., are common to all languages, so that poor skills in one language will be manifested as poor skills in a second language (Geva, 1995)
In order to test the validity of the study theme, a nonparametric test (Wilcoxon test) for dependent samples was conducted in order to examine the statistical significance of the differences in English linguistic skills before and after the intervention program
Summary
It is generally accepted that poor readers suffer significant difficulties in learning a second language (Geva, YaghoubZadeh, & Schuster, 2000). Poor readers with low linguistic skills on their first language will present low linguistic skills on their second language. The reason for the difficulties being that the same meta-linguistic skills related to literacy, such as phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, syntactic awareness, etc., are common to all languages, so that poor skills in one language will be manifested as poor skills in a second language (Geva, 1995). Difficulties of poor readers in a second language are as a result of poor skills in the first language (Leikin, Share, & Schwartz, 2005). The consequence is that improved linguistic skills in a first language will result in improved linguistic skills in a second language. The question is does this phenomenon can take place in the opposite way as well
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