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Learning to read English among Japanese learners of English as a second language

University of British Columbia

Although many studies have suggested the importance of basic skills (phonology, orthography, and syntax) in a native language when English native speakers learn an Indo-European language as a second language, little attention has been given to the importance of these basic coding skills when Japanese native speakers learn English as a second language. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the basic language coding skills such as phonology, orthography, and syntax in Japanese (native language) and that of English (foreign language) among Japanese learners of English as a foreign language. Forty-seven native Japanese speakers (18-45 years old) participated for this study. The participants were assessed with a word reading tasks (word identification) in Japanese and English and divided into two groups on the basis of the scores of the tests. The participants were administered word identification tasks, word attack (reading pseudo-words), oral cloze (syntactic tasks), and orthographic tasks in both English and Japanese. The scores of both groups in English and Japanese were compared. The results showed that the average readers scored significantly higher than the poor readers on word identification, word attack and oral cloze tasks. It reveals the importance of basic coding skills in a native and foreign language even though Japanese language is so different from Indo- European languages in terms of learning patterns and a writing system.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-07-28

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11418

Counselling Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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