The Neurobiological Development of Reading Fluency

This chapter offers an extensive review of current and foundational research literature on the neurodevelopment of dyslexia and reading fluency worldwide. The impact of different languages and their orthographies on the acquisition of phonological analysis and orthographical features by beginning readers is explored. Contributions from the Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory and new assessments, i.e. rapid automatized naming, have focused and advanced the understanding of slow phonological and visual processing skills. Recently, the development of new definitions of fluency has led to a proposed continuum of automatized decoding and processing skills required for students of English. Computer technology has enhanced the use of visual hemisphere-specific stimulation to affect the neurodevelopment of efficient word retrieval pathways and to increase reading speed. Processes for subtyping students based on reading behaviors and then stimulating a particular hemisphere of the brain with the fast presentation of words and phrases have been found to change levels of activation in key brain locations and increase the fluent processing of connected text. Newer technologies such as diffusion tensor imaging, while somewhat suspect, may provide the evidence that ultimately will document the changes in communication between regions of interest regulating the automaticity of brain functions in reading

Interweaving letters and sounds : the impact of phonics instruction in English on the oral production and symbolic representation of sounds among university-level L2 English learners

The study described in this thesis was conducted with a number of L1 Spanish learners of L2 English who were students of English Pronunciation Practice (EPP), an undergraduate pronunciation course taught in English Teaching, Translation and Research programs at Facultad de Lenguas (FL), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). It was aimed at investigating whether explicit phonics instruction contributes positively to the oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words of a number of university-level L1 Spanish learners of L2 English. A quasi-experimental research designed was used and the data obtained were analyzed with a quantitative method. The participating students were divided into experimental and control groups. The total number of students whose performance was analyzed was 62 (experimental = 33 and control = 29). Both groups were pretested on oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words. Next, the experimental group received a six-lesson phonics instruction focusing on the pronunciation and transcription of six specific orthographic combinations. After that both groups were posttested in terms similar to the pretest. All the data collected were analyzed using the dependent t test (also known as paired t test) to assess the difference between the averages obtained in the pretest and posttest conditions by each group. This was complemented with a variability analysis conducted to determine the degree of difficulty caused by the different combinations to the participating students. The results obtained from this study confirm the hypothesis that students who received explicit phonics instruction performed better in terms of oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words containing the orthographic combinations chosen than did students who did not receive such instruction. Pedagogical implications, practical applications and directions for future research are given

Graphic loans: East Asia and beyond

The national languages of East Asia (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) have made extensive use of a type of linguistic borrowing sometimes referred to as a 'graphic loan'. Such loans have no place in the conventional classification of loans based on Haugen (1950) or Weinreich (1953), and research on loan word theory and phonology generally overlooks them. The classic East Asian phenomenon is discussed and a framework is proposed to describe its mechanism. It is argued that graphic loans are more than just 'spelling pronunciations', because they are a systematic and widespread process, independent of but not inferior to phonological borrowing. The framework is then expanded to cover a range of other cases of borrowing between languages to show that graphic loans are not a uniquely East Asian phenomenon, and therefore need to be considered as a major category of loan

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

Does Mode of Input Affect How Second Language Learners Create Form–Meaning Connections and Pronounce Second Language Words?

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form–meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding pictures, and completed a picture-naming test 3 times (before, immediately, and about 6 days after treatment). The elicited speech samples were assessed for form–meaning connection (spoken form recall) and pronunciation accuracy (accentedness, comprehensibility). Results showed that the reading-while-listening group recalled a significantly greater number of spoken word forms than did the listening-only group. Learners in the reading-while-listening and listening-only modes were judged to be less accented and more comprehensible compared to learners in the reading-only mode. However, only learners receiving spoken input without orthographic support retained more target-like (less accented) pronunciation compared to learners receiving only written input. Furthermore, sound–spelling consistency of words significantly moderated the degree to which different learning modes impacted pronunciation learning. Taken together, the findings suggest that simultaneous presentation of written and spoken forms is optimal for the development of form–meaning connection and comprehensibility of novel words but that provision of only spoken input may be beneficial for the attainment of target-like accent

Sound-spelling units in German word identification. A developmental perspective

This dissertation explores the interaction of spoken and written language units in German word identification at different stages of reading proficiency, under consideration of cross-linguistic differences. The first part is based on a visual lexical decision experiment and a corpus study investigating the role of word stress in written word identification. Study 1 compares subjects’ responses to bisyllabic words with dominant vs. subdominant stress pattern. The results show that young readers tended to assign the most frequent stress pattern by default, whereas responses of adult participants did not reflect such a tendency. These observations indicate that word stress is automatically activated, at least in young readers from primary school. Study 2 investigates whether orthographic patterns present in word endings might provide cues to stress patterns in bisyllabic words, and the findings support this view. Considering observations from Study 1 and 2, it is argued that an implicit acquisition of orthographic cues to word stress through reading experience is a typical step in reading development, which is discussed within a recent model on polysyllabic word reading (Perry et al. 2010). The second part of this dissertation focuses on the role of orthographic information in spoken word identification. Study 3, an auditory lexical decision experiment compares subjects' responses to simplex words with sound-to-spelling consistent rimes vs. words with inconsistent rimes. The results show that words with inconsistent rimes were processed more slowly than words with consistent rimes even in young readers, thus indicating that spelling information is automatically activated in spoken word identification, already early in reading acquisition. Assumptions on the impact of spelling knowledge for the quality of lexically stored word representations is discussed, and it is argued that teaching methods should include implicit and explicit orthographic trainings from early on

Cognitive processes and neural correlates of reading in languages with graded levels of orthographic transparency: Spanish, English and Hebrew

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis examined the cognitive processes and neural correlates involved in reading Spanish (a transparent orthography), English (an intermediate orthography) and Hebrew (an opaque orthography) by bilinguals and trilinguals. The main objectives of the five experiments were to: (i) extend previous findings which demonstrated that orthographic transparency influences the degree of reliance on lexical and sublexical processing, and (ii) assess the effects of orthographic transparency and language proficiency on strategies employed for reading in a second and third language. Word/non-word naming tasks undertaken by Spanish-English bilinguals, Hebrew-English bilinguals and English monolinguals, where frequency, length and lexicality were manipulated, showed a predominant reliance on sublexical processing in Spanish, lexical processing in Hebrew, and a balanced interplay in English. Effects of language proficiency were also observed as slower naming and lower accuracy in English as a second language. Concurrently, while showing an efficient adaptation of reading strategy to the level of orthographic transparency of English, Hebrew bilinguals appeared to show stronger reliance on sublexical processing than Spanish bilinguals, suggesting a compensatory mechanism. fMRI experiments showed that reading in all languages was associated with a common network of predominantly left-lateralised cerebral regions. Reading in each language was associated with some preferential activation within regions implicated in lexical and sublexical processing, in keeping with their graded levels of orthographic transparency. Effects of language proficiency were demonstrated as increased activation within medial frontal regions implicated in attentional processes as well as right-lateralised homologous language-processing regions. Furthermore, the patterns of activation seen in Hebrew readers in English strengthened the notion of a compensatory mechanism. Finally, a trilingual experiment replicated findings observed in bilinguals, revealed the acute complexity of reading in Hebrew as an additional language and further strengthened the concept of a compensatory mechanism in English and Spanish. The present findings further contribute to current knowledge on teaching methods, diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies for developmental and acquired reading disorders