Prediction of foreign language proficiency.

Sparks, Richard L.; Ganschow, Leonore; Patton, Jon; Artzer, Marjorie; Siebenhar, David; Plageman, Mark

doi:10.1037/0022-0663.89.3.549

Cited by 84 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…In a study of high school students learning a foreign language, Sparks and Artzer (1997) found that word decoding skill was the best predictor of yearend foreign language oral proficiency, better even than students' grades in their foreign language class the previous year. The authors interpreted their findings to show the utility of print for building representations of spoken words in memory.…”

Section: Implications For Vocabulary Learning and Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spellings of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning

Ehri

Rosenthal

2007

Journal of Literacy Research

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Vocabulary learning is central to reading ability and academic achievement. Vocabulary researchers and educators have viewed its essence as a process of associating the pronunciations and meanings of words in memory, and they have paid little attention to the contribution that spellings might make to vocabulary learning. We review theory and evidence showing that this is a serious oversight. Once children become literate, they retain the spellings of words bonded to their pronunciations and meanings in memory. Several studies show that spellings of words are retained in memory and influence phonemic and syllabic segmentation of words, they enhance memory for pseudowords, and they impact the detection of oral rhyming words. Two studies show that exposing second and fifth graders to the spellings of new vocabulary words enhances their memory for pronunciations and meanings of the words. Students with better developed orthographic knowledge benefit more from spellings in learning vocabulary words than students with weaker knowledge. In fact, the detection of a Matthew effect suggests that differences in orthographic knowledge create a difference in vocabulary size that grows increasingly large over time. Findings carry implications for enhancing vocabulary learning and instruction. Teachers need to show the spellings of new vocabulary words when they discuss their meanings. Students need to stop and pronounce unfamiliar words rather than skip them during independent reading. Researchers need to incorporate orthography into their theories explaining vocabulary acquisition, specifically phonological working memory theories, and they need to attend to its influence in studies they conduct.

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Section: Implications For Vocabulary Learning and Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spellings of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning

Ehri

Rosenthal

2007

Journal of Literacy Research

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“…Participants' were asked to read words in Spanish aloud (Sparks et al, 1997). The test was comprised of a list of 46 common Spanish words (e.g., lapiz, zanahoria).…”

Section: Word Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age of acquisition modulates neural activity for both regular and irregular syntactic functions

2007

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Studies have found that neural activity is greater for irregular grammatical items than regular items. Findings with monolingual Spanish speakers have revealed a similar effect when making gender decisions for visually presented nouns. The current study extended previous studies by looking at the role of regularity in modulating differences in groups that differ in the age of acquisition of a language. Early and late learners of Spanish matched on measures of language proficiency were asked to make gender decisions to regular (-o for masculine and -a for feminine) and irregular items (which can end in e,l,n,r,s,t and z). Results revealed increased activity in left BA 44 for irregular compared to regular items in separate comparisons for both early and late learners. In addition, within group-comparisons revealed that neural activity for irregulars extended into left BA 47 for late learners and into left BA 6 for early learners. Direct comparisons between-groups revealed increased activity in left BA 44/45 for irregular items indicating the need for more extensive syntactic processing in late learners. The results revealed that processing of irregular grammatical gender leads to increased activity in left BA 44 and adjacent areas in the left IFG regardless of when a language is learned. Furthermore, these findings suggest differential recruitment of brain areas associated with grammatical processing in late learners. The results are discussed with regard to a model which considers L2 learning as emerging from the competitive interplay between two languages.

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“…The general finding from multiple regression analyses is that native language (English) predictors are the best predictors for overall foreign language (German, French, or Spanish) proficiency and aptitude, but that these predictors would change over time. These retrospective results are interpreted as providing for further support for the authors' Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis (LCDH), hypothezing that weakness in one native language component would have an adverse effect on learning a foreign language (see Sparks et al, 1997 for a representative study). Predicating their study broadly within the LCDH framework with 145 Israeli fourth graders learning English as a foreign language, Kahn-Horwitz, Shimron, and Sparks find support for LCDH from their discriminant function analyses of these students classified as "weak" and "strong" readers of English.…”

Section: Foreign Language Proficiency and Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Editor’s commentary

Leong¹

2006

Ann. of Dyslexia

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Going into my fifth year as editor of Annals of Dyslexia, the official journal of the International Dyslexia Association, I would again like to thank IDA's President, Board of Directors, the Publications Subcommittee, the executive director, and her staff members for their support and assistance. I am particularly grateful to the authors, the Associate Editors, other Editorial Board members, and many ad hoc reviewers from different disciplines and different countries for their excellent contribution. These colleagues have provided me with stimulating ideas in different aspects of dyslexia during the review process and many e-mail exchanges. In many cases we agree, and in some cases we disagree, but we do so agreeably. I have learned much from the continuous academic discourse in addition to my intensive study of related literature that may be in the periphery of my knowledge and experience. For the high technical quality of the production of the Journal, I thank the compositor and the printer.This issue begins with an in-depth review paper on linguistic and cultural influences on brain organization of language with implications for dyslexia. This is followed by two papers, one on reading fluency and the other on the double-deficit hypothesis tested on an adult group. The fourth paper is on processing derived morphological forms in "high-functioning" adults with dyslexia. The last two papers are on the effect of native language and literacy measures on foreign language proficiency and difficulties. The topics discussed are varied, and yet all pertain to language learning and reading and their difficulties. LANGUAGE AND THE BRAINIn the first paper, Johansson, a neurologist by training with research interests in cerebrovascular lesions, brain plasticity, and language and music processing in the brain, has provided readers with an in-depth integration and critique of current literature from the neurological, neuropsychological, and psycholinguistic

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Prediction of foreign language proficiency.

Cited by 84 publications

References 43 publications

Spellings of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning

Spellings of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning

Age of acquisition modulates neural activity for both regular and irregular syntactic functions

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