Abstract
AbstractWe provide an exhaustive review of studies in the relatively new domain of research on the influence of orthography on second language (L2) phonological acquisition. While language teachers have long recognized the importance of written input—in addition to spoken input—on learners’ development, until this century there was very little systematic research investigating the relationship between orthography and L2 phonological acquisition. Here, we review studies of the influence of written input on L2 phonological awareness, phoneme perception, the acquisition of phonological processes and syllable structure, and the pronunciation and recognition of words. We elaborate the variables that appear to moderate written input effects: (1) whether or not a novel phonological contrast is systematically represented by the L2 writing system (systematicity); (2) whether some or all of the L2 graphemes are familiar to learners from the L1 (familiarity); (3) for familiar graphemes, whether the native language (L1) and the L2 employ the same grapheme-phoneme correspondences (congruence); and (4) the ability of learners to perceive an auditory contrast that is systematically represented in writing (perceptibility). We conclude by calling for future research on the pedagogical implications of this body of work, which has thus far received very little attention by researchers.
Highlights
Orthography and L2 phonological awarenessOne of the ways in which orthographic input may affect L2 learners’ development is in their phonological awareness, a type of metalinguistic awareness having to do with the sound structure of words. Bassetti (2006) examined the effect of Pinyin spelling conventions—and their relationship to English spelling conventions—on native English speakers’ acquisition of Mandarin phonology
Introduction and historical perspectiveResearch on the acquisition of second language (L2) phonology has relatively recently begun to systematically investigate the role that orthographic input plays in acquisition
We refer to those studies that have manipulated the availability of orthographic input during an exposure phase from those that examine the effects of existing orthographic knowledge
Summary
One of the ways in which orthographic input may affect L2 learners’ development is in their phonological awareness, a type of metalinguistic awareness having to do with the sound structure of words. Bassetti (2006) examined the effect of Pinyin spelling conventions—and their relationship to English spelling conventions—on native English speakers’ acquisition of Mandarin phonology. What is interesting about the Bassetti (2006) and Bassetti (2007) studies is that participants were not shown the Pinyin written forms at any time during the study; rather, they performed both the phoneme counting and the word production tasks by reading non-phonographic Hanzi characters, which do not present phonological information In this way, Bassetti was able to demonstrate that the effects of Pinyin spelling conventions affected learners’ phonological representations of Mandarin. Detey and Nespoulous (2008) employed a different type of phonological awareness task: syllable counting They examined the syllable-counting performance by native Japanese learners of French in three conditions: auditory, visual (written forms), and audiovisual. Further work connecting phonological awareness to online speech production or perception— in particular, focusing on any causal relationship between phonological awareness and online performance—would be useful for language instruction
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
