Orthographic learning through self-teaching among learners of English as a second language

Struggling with L2 alphabet: The role of proficiency in orthographic learning

“…Previous studies addressing L2 self-teaching and focusing exclusively on post-training data have reported accuracy rates indicative of successful orthographic learning in distant L1-L2 bilinguals (e.g., Y. Li, Wang, & Espinas, 2021); however, the present data offer a more precise analysis of the L2 self-teaching process and its modulation by crosslinguistic variation, hence pointing to the pitfall of restricting the evaluation to offline accuracy measures to fully understand orthographic learning processes.…”

“…In the study of Y. Li, Wang, and Espinas (2021), post-training accuracy rates obtained in spelling and visual recognition tasks revealed a fast L2 orthographic learning in Chinese-English learners, after just a few exposures to novel words, hence in line with self-teaching L1 findings. In that study, novel L2 words were embedded in texts which, importantly, could lead to the activation of top-down mechanisms that might ameliorate the putative impact of L1-L2 orthographic variation.…”

“…Regarding our hypotheses, as previous works have reported successful L2 self-teaching even in distant Chinese–English orthographies (e.g., Y. Li, Wang, & Espinas, 2021), one might expect no detrimental impact of L1–L2 orthographic variation over the course of training exposures.…”

“…In that study, novel L2 words were embedded in texts which, importantly, could lead to the activation of top-down mechanisms that might ameliorate the putative impact of L1–L2 orthographic variation. Nonetheless, Y. Li, Wang, and Espinas (2021) reported no significant correlation between the decoding accuracy of pseudowords and orthographic learning outcomes.…”

“…Nonetheless, Y. Li, Wang, and Espinas (2021) reported no significant correlation between the decoding accuracy of pseudowords and orthographic learning outcomes. Although the authors hypothesised that this pattern might be a consequence of their participants utilising an L1 reading approach during L2 orthographic learning, hence relying more on lexical than phonological information, this alternative explanation needs specific verification.…”