Phonological Awareness and Literacy in L2: Sensitivity to Phonological Awareness and Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences in L2 English

Introduction

Discovering the processes that enable acquisition of a second language (often referred to as L2) has always been a challenging task for researchers, educators, and language users. An L2 may refer to any subsequent language learned in addition to the mother tongue(s). Acquiring an L2 implies that adult language learners have already acquired their first language (L1), which may influence them during the L2 acquisition, and they are often expected to draw on this knowledge while acquiring the target language. They further possess general knowledge about the world, communication strategies, and knowledge of how language works in general, which are factors affecting the acquisition of an L2.

This chapter is concerned with the development of oral and written literacy in alphabetic languages, in other words, the skills, abilities, and knowledge that are needed for spelling, writing, and reading to develop (Justice & Pullen, 2003). The emphasis is on young adults learning an L2 in a new orthography and how phonological awareness can aid them in this endeavour, even though the chapter has larger implications for L1 and L2 populations across different orthographies. Becoming literate in a language involves mastering the code that refers to the skill of matching graphemes to the phonemes they represent. Given that language is code-based, decoding and recoding are necessary for reading and writing (Fricke, Bowyer-Crane, Haley, Hulme, & Snowling, 2013; Krijnen, van Steensel, Meeuwisse, Jongerling, & Severiens, 2019; Lems, Miller, & Soro, 2017). As a consequence, literacy development depends on several factors, such as oral language, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge. However, for the context under investigation, the relationship of literacy to phonological awareness is considered to be the most suitable predictor of literacy development in both the L1 and L2. It is argued that knowledge of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences, also referred to as alphabetic knowledge (Lems, Miller, & Soro, 2017), is of particular importance for literacy acquisition to reach an advanced level.

When considering the learning and teaching of the English as an L2, the question that emerges is how L2 users develop phonological skills in the target language. Also, a further question is whether these skills have already been developed in the L1, including the knowledge of the L1 phonological system, and whether this knowledge can be transferred to the L2 (Anderson, 2004). A number of studies emphasize the relationships between L1 and L2 literacy skills (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Abu-Rabia & Siegel 2002; Shimron & Sivan, 1994). Literacy skills in L2 English seem to be related to literacy skills in the L1 despite the use of different orthographies as in the case of L1 Arabic, Hebrew, and Mandarin, which are languages that use a different script and have diverse phonological representations when compared to L2 English. Studies of literate adult L2 learners from non-alphabet and alphabet L1 languages emphasize the same need, which is the need of instruction in the phoneme-grapheme correspondences of written L2 English (Strucker, 2002). Literate adults in an alphabetic language have developed their reading skills and behaviors in the L1 and are aware that written language can represent speech. They also have exposure to written speech outside the L2 classroom, and most of them may not face major difficulties when reading English because they are more familiar with the English alphabet compared to non-alphabet L2 learners. However, the present chapter examines both alphabetic L1 and L2 languages pointing to the need of longitudinal, cross-language studies on systems that employ different orthographies.