Aydin Y. Durgunoğlu

A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition.

Phonological awareness is one of the critical skills in the acquisition of reading in an alphabetic orthography. The development of phonological awareness was compared across Turkish and English-speaking kindergarten and first-grade children (n = 138). The Turkish-speakers were more proficient in both handling of the syllables and deleting final phonemes of words. These patterns were related to the characteristics of the respective spoken languages (such as the saliency of the syllable, familiarity of the nonword patterns, importance of onset or final phoneme deletion, importance of vowel harmony) and the development of phonological awareness was discussed as a function of the characteristics of spoken language, orthography and literacy instruction.

Beginning to read in Turkish: A phonologically transparent orthography

The purpose of this study was to investigate early literacy acquisition in a phonologically transparent orthography with regular letter-sound correspondences. It was considered that Turkish, with its systematic phonological and orthographic structure, would make different demands on the beginning reader than the languages used in many of the previous studies of literacy acquisition. First grade children were assessed using tests of phonological awareness, letter recognition, word and pseudoword recognition, spelling, syntactic awareness, and listening comprehension at the beginning of the school year. The impact of these factors on the development of word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension was examined. The results strongly suggest that a phonologically transparent orthography fosters the early development of word recognition skills, and that phonological awareness contributes to word recognition in the early stages of reading acquisition. Once the childrens word recognition performance is high, listening comprehension ability distinguishes the different levels of reading comprehension among children. These patterns of results were interpreted as reflecting the phonological and orthographic characteristics of the Turkish language and orthography.

On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning.

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: a neutral (XXX or ready) prime, a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, no previously studied semantically related primes, and no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were no semantically related primes and all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. Facilitation effects from semantically related primes were small in magnitude and occurred inconsistently. Discussion focused on the implications these results have for the episodic-semantic memory distinction and the automaticity of episodic and semantic priming effects.

Phonological Awareness in Literacy Acquisition: It's Not Only for Children

The aim of this study was to determine the cognitive processes of adult literacy acquisition. We assessed the progress of 59 women participating in an intensive adult literacy program that we have developed in Turkey. After only 90 hr of instruction, there were significant improvements in letter and word recognition, phonological awareness, and spelling levels. Word recognition and spelling were predicted by phonological awareness. The results were consistent with studies on childrens literacy acquisition, which show the critical nature of phonological awareness in literacy acquisition.The aim of this study was to determine the cognitive processes of adult literacy acquisition. We assessed the progress of 59 women participating in an intensive adult literacy program that we have developed in Turkey. After only 90 hr of instruction, there were significant improvements in letter and word recognition, phonological awareness, and spelling levels. Word recognition and spelling were predicted by phonological awareness. The results were consistent with studies on childrens literacy acquisition, which show the critical nature of phonological awareness in literacy acquisition.

Repetition, semantic priming, and stimulus quality: implications for the interactive-compensatory reading model.

Recognition latencies of single words were manipulated by repetition, degradation, or both, and the effects of context were observed. In both lexical decision and pronunciation tasks, repeated words were recognized faster than nonrepeated words yet were not any less affected by semantic context. Both inserting asterisks between a words letters and masking slowed word recognition in comparison with a clear presentation, but only the masking manipulation showed contextual inhibition. In short, the magnitude of context effects did not always vary monotonically with the word recognition latencies in the neutral condition. Also, presentation of a word in an unrelated rather than related context did not produce larger repetition effects. The implications of these findings for Stanovich and Wests (1983) and Jacobys (1983) models are discussed.

An Overview of Cross-language Transfer in Bilingual Reading

Abstract The focus of this chapter is on the influence of first-language knowledge, strategies and processes on reading in a second language, that is, on cross-language transfer. We identify major subcomponents of the reading process and review research that examines the influence of the first language within those subcomponents.

The Relationships Between Bilingual Children’S Reading And Writing In Their Two Languages

In this explorative study, we discuss the links between language, reading and writing variables in the two languages of 26 fourth-grade Spanish-English bilingual children who have just been transitioned to all — English classrooms. Word recognition and spelling proficiencies were correlated both within- and across-languages, but they did not correlate with oral proficiency measures. The form ratings of the writing samples correlated with word recognition and spelling measures, but the content rating of writing samples did not correlate with oral proficiency measures. A qualitative analysis of the writing samples yielded cross-language transfer effects (in both directions) at the level of graphophonic, syntactic and vocabulary knowledge as well as in terms of story structure.

13 The role of formal definitions in reading comprehension of bilingual students

Abstract In upper elementary grades, once word recognition is efficient, reading comprehension is more affected by processes such as vocabulary and background knowledge. One facet of vocabulary knowledge that is closely related to comprehension is the quality of formal definitions, as this knowledge reflects the students awareness of decontextualized language. Spanish-English fourth-grade students who have just been transitioned to all-English classrooms gave definitions to words from Spanish and English expository passages before reading the texts and answering questions about them. The quality of formal definitions was correlated across the two languages, indicating cross-language transfer of this metalinguistic awareness. In addition, formal definition quality was related to reading comprehension both within and across languages.

Effects of a Bilingual Context on Memory Performance

Abstract In this chapter, we explore when bilingual presentation of material hurts, helps, or has no effect on memory performance. To date, considerable data have suggested that bilingual subjects often show poorer performance on various tasks such as free recall, recognition, object, word, or digit naming, especially if the tasks involve bilingual presentation or material (e.g., Magiste, 1079). In such studies, bilingual subjects are slower and sometimes also less accurate. There are, however, also studies mat show no differences between performance in bilingual and monolingual contexts (e.g., Kolers, 1966) as well as studies mat show an advantage in favor of bilingual contexts (e.g., Peynircioglu & Tekcan, in press). We first review the literature on when a bilingual context hurts, helps, or has no effect on memory performance and look at the various theoretical accounts that have followed such results. We then report two new studies looking at some of the conditions under which bilingual presentation hurts, nelps, or has no effect on memory. In the first experiment, we show mat bilingual subjects have a larger memory span if words are presented in two different languages than if they are presented in a single language, but only if the words in the mixed-language condition are blocked by language (e.g., house, lake, green, nube, mundo, chico for Spanish-English bilinguals) and not if they alternate (house, nube, lake, mundo, green, chico). In the second experiment, we show that performance on a word-fragment completion task can be enhanced by studying the target words translation; however, neither the type of orienting task engaged in during the study phase (conceptual or perceptual) nor the similarities between the characteristics of the study language (Spanish or Chinese) and the test language (English) influence word-fragment completion performance.

15 Code-switching in preschool bilingual children

Abstract Code-switching refers to the alternating use of two or more languages, either within a sentence (intrasentential) or between sentences (intersentential). Because code-switching is governed by grammatical rules, both language systems are presumed to be active while producing mixed sentences. Code-switching occurs in discourse of fluent and nonfluent bilinguals alike, although intrasentential switches are often thought to be illustrative of the level of bilingualism or comfort with another language (e.g., Poplack, 1980 ). This chapter focuses on code-switching in preschool children, with a special emphasis on the linguistic context, comparisons between intra- and intersentential switching, the effect of level of bilingualism, differences in production and comprehension of sentences, and experimental demands. To this end, we present new data from 36 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 5, and tie the results to the theoretical framework of Kroll and her colleagues (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ; Sholl, Sankaranarayanan, & Kroll, 1995 ) on conceptual and lexical links between words in sentence processing.