Cross‐linguistic transfer of phonological skills: a Malaysian perspective

Abstract

This study examined the phonological and reading performance in English of Malaysian children whose home language was Bahasa Malaysia (BM). A sample of 69 Malaysian Standard Two pupils (aged 7-8 years) was selected for the study. Since commencing school at the age of 6 years, the children had been learning to read in BM and had subsequently also been learning to read in English for some 12 months. The study was part of a larger scale research programme that fully recognized the limitations of tests that had not been developed and standardized in Malaysia. Nevertheless, as a first step to developing such tests, a comparison with existing norms for the Phonological Assessment Battery (PhAB) and the Wechsler Objective Reading Dimension (WORD) was undertaken in relation to information about the children's L1 and L2 language competencies. Results showed that the children's performance on PhAB was at least comparable to the UK norms while, not surprisingly, they fared less well on WORD. The results are discussed in terms of L1 and L2 transfer, whereby the transparency of written BM and the structured way in which reading is taught in BM facilitates performance on phonological tasks in English. This has implications for identifying children with phonologically based reading difficulties.

The effectiveness of synthetic phonics in the development of early reading skills among struggling young ESL readers

“…Similar to the view in the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 1979), the background knowledge of readers aids effective reading. In the localized context of Malaysia, Gomez and Reason (2002) comparably indicated that the phonological processing skills gained in L1, the Malay language, have enabled the ESL readers to decode and read in English effectively. The background knowledge of how to read in L1 has shown to be transferable when reading in L2 and has thus benefited in developing L2 reading skills.…”

Development and validation of a reading-related assessment battery in Malay for the purpose of dyslexia assessment

“…Native Malay words are based on four distinct syllable structures: V, VC, CV and CVC (Gomez & Reason 2002;Hamdan 1988). In addition to the basic syllable structures, Malay words are rich in derivatives with its prefixes and suffixes (Gomez & Reason 2002).…”

“…In addition to the basic syllable structures, Malay words are rich in derivatives with its prefixes and suffixes (Gomez & Reason 2002). The phonological structure of Malay words ranges from very simple two syllable words such as CV+CV words (e.g.…”

Second‐language learners’ advantage in metalinguistic awareness: A question of languages’ characteristics

“…Among other results, strong cross‐linguistic transfer was obtained between phonological awareness tasks in both bilinguals' languages, be it in Spanish/English among first graders followed in second grade (Gottardo & Mueller, ), in Korean/English among first, second and third graders (Wang et al ., ), in Chinese/English among first, second and third graders (Chen, Xu, Nguyen, Hong & Wang, ) or in Arabic/English in grades 3–6 (Saiegh‐Haddad & Geva, ). Thus, authors usually agree that phonological awareness is a general mechanism, which is not language‐specific (Gomez & Reason, ). Finally, Contradictory findings were observed in studies evaluating the transfer of the same morphological aspects (compounds) in the same languages (Chinese L1/English L2) among children approximately equivalent in age (1st, 2nd and 4th grade for Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo & Ramirez, ; 2nd and 4th grade for Wang et al ., ) and with normal English efficiency (total immersion programmes for both studies), thus raising some questions about the aforementioned factor of languages' characteristics.…”

“…Phonological, morphological and syntactic awareness Metalinguistic awareness is defined as the speaker's ability to distance himself from the content of speech in order to pay attention to the structural features of language and to the language's properties as an object. Then, the speaker can implement a conscious thought and manipulation of the structural features of language also leading him to develop his semantic abilities (Gombert, 1992). Several metalinguistic abilities are distinguished according to formal linguistic aspects: phonological, morphological or syntactic awareness.…”