Kahn-Horwitz Janina, Shimron Joseph, Sparks Richard L
Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, 31905, Haifa, Israel.
Ann Dyslexia. 2006 Jun;56(1):161-85. doi: 10.1007/s11881-006-0007-1.
This study examined individual differences among beginning readers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study concentrated on the effects of underlying first language (L1) knowledge as well as EFL letter and vocabulary knowledge. Phonological and morphological awareness, spelling, vocabulary knowledge, and word reading in Hebrew L1, in addition to knowledge of EFL letters and EFL vocabulary, were measured. The study also investigated the effect of socioeconomic background (SES) on beginning EFL readers. Participants included 145 fourth graders from three schools representing two socioeconomic backgrounds in the north of Israel. The results indicate that knowledge of English letters played a more prominent role than knowledge of Hebrew L1 components in differentiating between strong and weak EFL readers. The Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis was supported by L1 phonological awareness, word reading, and vocabulary knowledge appearing as part of discriminating functions. The presence of English vocabulary knowledge as part of the discriminant functions provides support for English word reading being more than just a decoding task for EFL beginner readers. Socioeconomic status differentiated the groups for EFL word recognition but not for EFL reading comprehension.
本研究调查了以英语为外语（EFL）的初级阅读者之间的个体差异。该研究聚焦于潜在的第一语言（L1）知识以及EFL字母和词汇知识的影响。除了EFL字母和EFL词汇知识外，还测量了希伯来语L1中的语音和形态意识、拼写、词汇知识以及单词阅读能力。该研究还调查了社会经济背景（SES）对初级EFL阅读者的影响。参与者包括来自以色列北部代表两种社会经济背景的三所学校的145名四年级学生。结果表明，在区分强EFL阅读者和弱EFL阅读者方面，英语字母知识比希伯来语L1成分知识发挥了更突出的作用。语言编码差异假说得到了L1语音意识、单词阅读和词汇知识作为区分功能一部分的支持。英语词汇知识作为判别功能的一部分，这为EFL初学者的英语单词阅读不仅仅是一项解码任务提供了支持。社会经济地位在EFL单词识别方面区分了不同组，但在EFL阅读理解方面没有区分。
