Abstract
Phonemic awareness (PA) accounts for individual differences in early reading achievement in English as a first language (L1), but its effect generally fades with age. However, in English as a second language (L2), PA may still explain variation in reading ability among the adult population, depending on the readers’ L1 background. We examined the role of PA in the reading comprehension of L1-Japanese readers to closely examine the relationship between PA and reading comprehension. A path analysis revealed that PA makes an indirect contribution to reading comprehension through decoding, which along with vocabulary knowledge directly supports reading comprehension. The present study provides evidence for a role, albeit indirect, played by PA in L2-English reading by L1-Japanese adult readers, and thus lends support to the understanding of the importance of fundamental phonological processing in L2 reading.
Highlights
Phonemic awareness (PA) enables decoding in alphabetic languages, such as English, by helping readers extract sound information from written input, and is a fundamental ability for reading skills development (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991; Ehri et al, 2001; Engen & Høien, 2002; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Nation & Hulme, 1997)
The results showed that Hong-Kong participants performed poorly on PA and nonword decoding, similar score differences were not found on real-word tasks
This study takes up the following research question: Does PA have any effect on L2-English RC among L1-Japanese adult readers? We examined this question by including vocabulary knowledge as well as decoding as variables, because these two are known influential predictors of RC and may mediate between PA and RC (August & Shanahan, 2006; Braze et al, 2007; Carlson et al, 2013; Engen & Høien, 2002; McCandliss et al, 2003; Pasquarella et al, 2012)
Summary
Phonemic awareness (PA) enables decoding in alphabetic languages, such as English, by helping readers extract sound information from written input, and is a fundamental ability for reading skills development (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991; Ehri et al, 2001; Engen & Høien, 2002; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Nation & Hulme, 1997). Decoding skills supported by PA foster the accurate pronunciation of unfamiliar words and help readers create phonological representations of unknown words as a means of word inference How to cite this paper: Yoshikawa, L., & Yamashita, J. Phonemic Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Japanese Adult Learners of English. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 4, 471-480.
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