Russian Phono-Lexical Acquisition and Orthographic Input

Abstract

We investigated how grapheme familiarity and grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) congruence affect adult learners’ ability to make use of orthographic input (OI) during phono-lexical acquisition. Native English speakers, with no Russian experience (naïve) or learners of Russian, heard auditory forms, saw pictured meanings, and saw written input either in a No Orthography condition or an Orthography condition for words that contained unfamiliar Cyrillic graphemes, familiar graphemes and congruent GPCs, and familiar graphemes and incongruent GPCs. Naïve participants evidenced incongruent GPC interference effects. Experienced learners acquired targetlike GPCs, although beginner learners did not. In a separate experiment, naïve learners were exposed to an intervention to mitigate effects of OI; the interventions did not improve test accuracy. Results support previous findings that incongruent GPCs interfere with phono-lexical acquisition. We also found evidence that target language experience mitigates negative effects of OI, but interventions may not sufficiently aid naïve learners’ phono-lexical acquisition.

Cross-Scriptal Orthographic Influence on Second Language Phonology

“…However, it is less clear how this concept relates to learners with varying script familiarity and literacy experiences across writing systems. Some studies have looked at degree of familiarity, based on similarity between L1 and L2 graphemes in Latin and Cyrillic scripts (Mathieu 2016;Showalter 2018) and L1 English speakers' L2 experience in Russian and Mandarin (Showalter 2020;Hao and Yang 2021;Hayes-Harb and Hacking 2015). However, it continues to be difficult to tease apart script familiarity from broader L2 proficiency, and the overrepresentation of L1 English monolingual samples is noteworthy.…”

“…Thus, incongruence was a pervasive effect, regardless of perceptibility, whereas the unfamiliarity of orthographic input did not pose additional challenges. Showalter (2020) extended this study to compare naïve, beginner, and experienced learners, as well as the impact of explicit instruction. Interference effects from incongruent GPCs were particularly evident with the naïve participants, which did not improve with instruction, but these interference effects reduced with increased language experience.…”

The influence of orthography in second language phonological acquisition

“…With an eye to the practical implications of this line of research, Showalter (2018b) and Showalter (2019) followed up on this finding, investigating the effects of L2 experience and instructional interventions on the Cyrillic incongruency effect for native English speakers. A new group of naive native speakers of English were assigned to the no orthography, orthography, intervention A, and intervention B groups ( n = 20 in each group).…”

“…However, we have very little empirical evidence so far in this regard. A study that has observed improvement over time by learners is presented in Showalter (2018b) and Showalter (2020), which found that experienced L1 English learners of Russian had overcome the interference of incongruent orthographic effects to some extent relative to beginning learners and naive participants.…”

“…A small number of studies have investigated the role that explicit instruction may play in preventing the interference effects that sometimes arise as a result of orthographic input. For example, Showalter (2018b) and Showalter (2020) attempted to moderate the negative effects of incongruent orthography on naive native English speakers learning Russian words, using textual enhancement in one condition and explicit instruction in another, finding that neither of these brief interventions improved participants’ performance at test. In another example, Brown (2015) and Hayes-Harb et al (2018) also attempted to prevent native English speakers from experiencing the negative effects of written input on their acquisition of final devoiced consonants in German.…”