Literacy: Crosslinguistic and Crossmodal Issues

Abstract

Crosslinguistic relationships between the L1 and the L2 as well as crossmodal relationships between oral and written language provide a basis for discussing research on the reading and writing development of ELLs. There are two fundamental and inescapable reasons why this is so. First of all, the learners under consideration, by definition, are acquiring literacy in English as a second language and have an ongoing developmental history in their first language. As a result, the relationship between their L1 and their L2 figures prominently in much of the research on reading and writing development in ELLs. In fact, relatively little research looks at L2 literacy development in ELLs without reference to their L1. Second, since reading and writing in any language implicate both oral and written modes of language, the relationship between oral and written language in the L1 and L2 of ELLs has also been a primary theme in much of the research reviewed here. The questions are: What is the relationship between oral and written language development? Is it the same for native English speakers and ELLs? The following specific relationships are examined in the sections that follow: