Literacy: Crosslinguistic and Crossmodal Issues

English-only instruction at Korean universities: Help or hindrance to higher learning?

“…In an attempt to keep up with the globalization trend, Korean institutions of higher education have imposed and implemented this policy without properly preparing their faculty and students for the language competencies and pedagogical strategies necessary for the educational change (Bae, 2011). Despite the premises and promises of the new policy, scholars and researchers in language education and program evaluation have shown empirical evidence opposed to using the second language exclusively as a teaching medium for students who are in the process of learning the second language (e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006;Greene, 1997;Riches & Genesee, 2006;Slavin & Cheung, 2005). Rather, using the first language for at least some of the instructional time helps those learners to achieve content learning as well as second language and literacy development because it allows them to transfer their cognitive and metacognitive skills from their first language to a second language (Cummins, 1981;Genesee, 1999).…”

“…Despite recent statewide bans on bilingual programs in Arizona, California and Massachusetts, Parrish et al (2006) found in students' performances on standardized measures for different content areas that English language learners who were immersed in English-only lessons did not outperform those enrolled in bilingual programs where students learned content areas in their first language (e.g., Spanish). Syntheses of empirical research findings in the form of a meta-analysis have consistently shown that English language learners who are taught using at least some of their native language perform significantly better on standardized tests of English reading and other content areas than those who are taught only in English (e.g., Greene, 1997;Riches & Genesee, 2006;Slavin & Cheung, 2005).…”

The Role of Explicit Instruction and Instructional Design in Promoting Phonemic Awareness Development and Transfer From Spanish to English

“…Because of the linguistic interdependence between a student's primary and secondary languages (Cummins, 1979;Riches & Genesee, 2006), we may infer from theories on cross-linguistic transfer that phonemic awareness knowledge acquired in the student's first language (Spanish) may influence his or her ability to acquire similar skills in the second language (English; August, Calder o on, & Carlo, 2000;Durgunoglu et al, 1993;Leafstedt & Gerber, 2005;Lopez & Greenfield, 2004).…”

The effects of language typology on L2 lexical availability and spelling accuracy

“…Thanks to the Latin origin of some words and the use of an alphabetic writing system in both English and the Romance languages (Spanish and Portuguese) of the participants, Romance-speaking learners outperformed the Chinese-speaking participants. As claimed by Riches and Genesee (2006), the transfer of orthographic and cognate vocabulary knowledge is more likely in languages that are typologically similar (e.g. Spanish and English) than in typologically different languages (e.g.…”