The simultaneous development of receptive skills in an orthographically transparent second language

Elicited Imitation: A Test for All Learners?

“…The analyses conducted to investigate RQ1 support the hypothesis that educational level likely impacts EI performance. MFR results offered no indications that EI as a test method would be incompatible with loweducated learners (Tammelin-Laine & Martin, 2015), as long as the prompts do not include pseudowords. It remains possible that performance differences between low-and highly educated learners were exacerbated by issues of test wiseness (Carlsen, 2017) because lower educated learners are not as familiar with testing procedures, which can negatively impact their result (Carlsen, 2017).…”

Learning to read for the first time as adult immigrants in Finland

“…Nevertheless, it is vital to keep in mind that in contrast to L1 children, beginning L2 readers, including both children and adults, are faced with the challenge "of learning to read in a language that they have yet to master" (Droop & Verhoeven, 2003, p. 78); and particularly LESLLA readers are faced with the challenge of mastering both oral and written L2 skills at the same time. Tammelin- Laine and Martin (2015) identify the claim that "Finnish is written the way it is spoken" as a common misconception, pointing out that "the textual structure of speech is not the same as the structure of writing, the syntax is different, and many spoken words are seldom written and vice versa" (p. 40). Tammelin- Laine and Martin (2015) emphasize further that even in cases of regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences "mere knowledge of the letters is not enough to trigger their ability to blend sounds" (p. 39).…”

“…Tammelin- Laine and Martin (2015) identify the claim that "Finnish is written the way it is spoken" as a common misconception, pointing out that "the textual structure of speech is not the same as the structure of writing, the syntax is different, and many spoken words are seldom written and vice versa" (p. 40). Tammelin- Laine and Martin (2015) emphasize further that even in cases of regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences "mere knowledge of the letters is not enough to trigger their ability to blend sounds" (p. 39).…”

“…The studies by Halme (2008), Heikkinen (2009) and Tammelin-Laine (2014a) provided significant findings on LESLLA learners' L2 written and oral language development. Tammelin-Laine's work was identified as seminal in emerging LESLLA research in Finland, being further the only one whose results had also partly been disseminated in English (Tammelin-Laine, 2011b;Tammelin-Laine & Martin, 2015. Tammelin-Laine's (2014a) longitudinal study examined the L2 acquisition, including reading literacy development, of five adult immigrants during their first 10-month long Finnish L2 language and literacy course.…”

“…Laine, Nissilä, & Sergejeff, 2007) was not considered in this study. The international search conducted in the databases EBSCOhost and SCOPUS employed the search terms illiterate, Finnish, non-literate, low-educated and provided only two publications (Tammelin-Laine, 2014c; Tammelin- Laine & Martin, 2015). An overview of studies identified as relevant to current LESLLA research in Finland, including descriptions and summaries of methodology and main results of the studies, is presented in Table 1 below.…”