L2 Literacy DevelopmentDo literate or non‐literate adults  

learning English as a second language  follow a similar reading development process  

to English children? 

May 2012

Laura Cunnington

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. i

1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1

2 INFLUENTIAL STUDIES ...................................................................................... 4

3 RESEARCH ON READING AND DEVELOPMENT .......................................... 6

3.1 Children’s Reading Development ............................................................. 6 3.1.1 Stage Models .......................................................................... 7 3.1.2 Chall’s Stages ......................................................................... 8

3.2 Schooled and unschooled L2 adults ........................................................ 10 3.2.1 Schooled adults ..................................................................... 11 3.2.2 Unschooled adults ................................................................. 11

3.3 Overview .............................................................................................. 13

4 PARTICIPANTS AND DATA COLLECTION ................................................... 14

4.1 Participants .............................................................................................. 14

4.2 Data Collection ........................................................................................ 17

5 RESULTS .............................................................................................. 22

6 DISCUSSION .............................................................................................. 28

7 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 35

APPENDIX I Task 1 .......................................................................................

APPENDIX II Task 2 .......................................................................................

APPENDIX III Task 3 .......................................................................................

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ABSTRACT

This study discusses unique empirical research on the early reading development process of

schooled (literate) and unschooled (non-literate) adults learning English as a second language

(L2). The main hypothesis is based on Kurvers’ (2006) study on unschooled adults learning

Dutch as an L2, as this was the only comparable existing study, and she concluded that

unschooled adults follow a similar reading development process to children. The aim of the

present study is to provide evidence on whether schooled or unschooled adults follow a similar

reading development process to children learning to read in English for the first time. The

process of children’s reading development is based on Chall’s (1983) stages of reading

development and this was used to compare with the results of the present study. Data was

collected from three schooled students and six unschooled adults attending ESOL (English to

Speakers of Other Languages) classes in the north-east of England. Each student was asked to

complete three tasks. Task 1 was a word list based on phonics and elicited their ability to read

words out of a context and the students’ level of grapheme-phoneme awareness. Task 2 also

elicited graphemic-phonemic awareness and whether the student recognised that several

graphemes can represent a single phoneme. Task 3 involved reading a story and answering five

questions in order to test reading comprehension. The results of Task 3 showed that the

schooled students followed a similar reading development process to children. Although this

was not the result that was expected, based on Kurvers’(2006) study and other research on

schooled adults, it can be accounted for by the low degree of transparency of English

orthography. The present study also provides evidence for the unschooled students beginning

the reading development process at a level lower than Stage 0 of Chall’s (1983) reading model.

From the data collected, it could also be claimed that schooled students at a low level in the L2

may transfer skills from the orthography of the L1 to the L2 where they have a similar

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transparency. This could account for the success in the tasks on graphemic-phonemic

awareness of some students in the present study.

  

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1. INTRODUCTION

There have been numerous studies carried out that explore the process of reading

development in children who have learned English as their first language (L1) and these have

developed ‘stage’ or ‘phase’ models to be used by researchers and teachers (Chall, 1983;

Ehri, 1991, 1994, 1995; Frith, 1985). However, little research has been carried out on the

reading development process of adults learning to read English as their second language (L2)

(Alderson, 1984, 2000; Bernhardt, 1991, 2005; Kurvers, 2006; Bernhardt and Kamil, 1995).

There are many studies based on the influences of learning to read in an L2 (Asfaha,

Beckman, Kurvers & Kroon, 2009; Bernhardt, 1991; Alderson 1984; 2000) and the general

agreement is that L2 learners are subject to a number of contributing factors (Bernhardt,

1991). These factors include linguistic, literacy and knowledge variables (Bernhardt, 1991),

that is, the knowledge about the orthography, the motivation and intention for learning to read

and also cultural knowledge that the learner possesses (Bernhardt, 1991).

Studies have shown that the level of language proficiency in the L2 and reading

comprehension level in the L1 significantly predict L2 reading comprehension (Asfaha et. al,

2009). Some studies have shown L1 script to be a predictor of L2 reading (Bernhardt, 1991;

Bell, 1995) whereby if the L1 and the L2 possess the same writing system, the reader

transfers their knowledge of the script (Bernhardt, 1991). Bell (1995) argues that literacy in

the L1 hinders the reading process of the L2 if it is in a different writing system. Therefore, if

the learners were not literate in the L1, they wouldn’t face interferences from the writing

system of the L1 when learning to read in the L2. Kurvers (2006) supports this view by

concluding that non-literate adults learning to read for the first time in an L2 follow a similar

reading development process to children. However Bernhardt (1991) believes that literate

learners begin the language learning process in a similar position to young children. There

  

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have also been a number of studies that suggest many reading skills that are developed in the

L1 are transferred across to the L2 (Kilborn and Ito, 1989; Koda, 2004; Rutherford, 1983).

There are no studies to this date that compare the reading development process of children

to both schooled and unschooled adults learning English as an L2. This has encouraged the

research question of this study: ‘Do literate or non-literate adults learning English as a second

language follow a similar reading development process to English children?’ It is important

to note that in this study the schooled students’ L1 does not use a Roman alphabetic writing

system. This was to ensure that the participants were not familiar with the Roman alphabet

and therefore the schooled students started from roughly the same stage as the unschooled

students.

The aim of this study is to provide primary research and data of schooled and unschooled

adults’ reading development processes compared to Chall’s (1983) ‘stages of reading

development’ model. My intention is that this study will provide useful information to

teachers and researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, linguistics or education

and reading on the differences in the process of reading development between schooled and

unschooled L2 adults.

Based on previous research from Kurvers (2006), I predict that unschooled adults will

follow a similar process to L1 children. L1 children do not have knowledge of another

language or writing system and therefore one would not expect them to follow the same

reading development process as schooled adults or bilingual children. Schooled adults will

also have language, reading skills and knowledge from the L1 that can be transferred over to

the L2 (Asfaha et. al, 2009; Koda, 2004). From this I also predict that schooled adults will

advance through the reading development process at a much faster rate than unschooled

adults and children, as L1 literacy has been shown to have a positive impact on L2 reading

development (August & Hakuta, 1997; van de Craats, Kurvers & Young-Scholten, 2005).

  

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Another hypothesis for this study is that unschooled adults will start the reading development

process at a level lower than Stage 0 of Chall’s (1983) model. Also, I predict that schooled

adult students will generally be more successful at the reading comprehension task than the

unschooled students because L2 proficiency and L1 reading comprehension are the two main

predictors of L2 reading comprehension (Asfaha et al., 2009). Finally, I predict that schooled

adults will have a higher graphemic-phonemic awareness compared to unschooled adults due

to previously acquired literacy skills.

The informants and their biographical information will be displayed and explained in

Chapter 4 of this study. The informants have been placed in order of ability to enable any

interesting social factors to be accounted for that may influence the adults’ level of reading.

How the study was conducted will also be explained in Chapter 4 as well as the choice of the

three tasks for the data collection. The results from the study will then be given and analysed

in Chapter 5 before comparing the each person’s scores for the three tasks and the

biographical information with Chall’s model of reading development in Chapter 6. This

comparison will allow a conclusion to be made based on whether schooled or unschooled

adults’ reading development process can be applied to Chall’s model.

  

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2. INFLUENTIAL STUDIES

Extensive research has been carried out on reading development in children (Chall, 1983;

Ehri, 1991, 1994, 1995; Frith, 1985; Coltheart, 1978) as well as adults learning to read in a

second language (Bernhardt, 1991; Alderson, 1984, 2000; Kurvers, 2006; Kurvers & van de

Craats, 2006; 2007). However, the amount of research carried out on the reading

development process of adult L2 learners of English is low (Kurvers, 2006; Wagner, 2004)

and other researchers have pointed out that “We do not know if the stages L2 learners go

through are similar to how educated adults learn a second language” (van de Craats et, al,

2005: 9).1

The main researchers who influenced my decision to conduct a study based on the early

reading development process in literate and non-literate adults learning English as an L2 were

Chall and her work on stages of reading development in children learning to read for the first

time, in 1983; also Ehri’s reading development model from 1995 has influenced my study

                                                            1 In addition to this related research which has influenced my interest in studying this topic further, this study

has primarily been as a result of my own personal interest and experience within the field of ESOL and helping

with classes in colleges and charities in the local area. My other motivation to study this topic has been to build

on my own knowledge of reading development in adults learning English as an L2 and to be able to put this into

practice when teaching ESOL students in the future as well as previous research I have carried out on this

subject. In 2011, I carried out a study to assess reading development in L2 learners of English and I compared

this to children’s reading development process. However, I was only able to gather data from three participants

at different levels who were also a mix of schooled and unschooled students. This restricted data made my study

unreliable but inspired me to want to discover more about the differences in the process of reading development

between schooled and unschooled adults learning English as an L2 and whether either group follow a similar

process to children by relating my results to Chall’s (1983) model.

  

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and she develops other models of reading development that will be explained in further detail

in the following chapter. The researcher who has influenced the direction of this study the

most, however, is Kurvers and her studies on reading development in her native language,

Dutch, as an L2 (Kurvers, 2006; Kurvers & van de Craats, 2006, 2007). In particular, some of

the conclusions from her study in 2006 form the basis for my hypotheses in this study. One

conclusion Kurvers (2006) came to was that adults learning to read for the first time in an L2

follow a similar reading development process to children (Kurvers, 2006). I have used this

claim as a falsifiable hypothesis that will be supported, rejected or reformulated from the

results collected in my study. Kurvers’ (2006) findings also influenced me to further consider

whether literate L2 adults would follow a different reading development process to non-

literate adults and, if so, in what way. This was how the research question for this study was

developed.

  

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3. RESEARCH ON READING DEVELOPMENT

Reading development is shown to be an important part of human development. The

process of reading can enhance our imagination and knowledge, as well as how we think

(Harrison, 2004). One definition of reading is “the process of receiving and interpreting

information encoded in language form via the medium of print” (Urquhart & Weir, 1998: 22).

This present study is concerned with how this process is achieved and developed over time.

3.1 Children’s Reading development

Children’s reading development, particularly in the Roman alphabetic writing systems and

various orthographies, is a topic that has been researched extensively. Researchers have

disagreed on the models that represent the process of learning to read. The two theories are

for stage models (Chall, 1983; Frith, 1985; Ehri, 1991, 1994, 1995; Ehri & Wilce, 1985) and

non-stage models (Smith, 1996; Goodman & Goodman, 1983) of reading development. The

non-stage models claim that the reading process in an alphabetic writing system follows a

similar process throughout (van de Craats et al., 2005). Stage models, on the other hand,

believe the reading process to be a sequence of stages (Kurvers, 2006) where the child must

complete one stage in order to progress onto the next. Interactive models of reading were also

suggested whereby the process of reading is both a top-down and bottom-up approach

(Alderson, 2000; Stanovich, 1980). The researchers claimed that in this process, the readers’

needs to decode2 or comprehend a text altered according to their level of reading ability.

Finally, a ‘dual-route’ model has also been proposed (Baron, 1977, 1979; Coltheart, 1978).

This route involved the reader linking the shapes of the letters and words to the semantics in

  

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their knowledge or memory in a parallel way (Ehri, 1991). Today, the majority of researchers

believe that reading development occurs in stages (Kurvers, 2006).

Children’s reading development in English has been shown to be slower in progression

compared to other languages. This is due to the transparency of that orthography for that

language. Transparency is the consistency of mapping letters with sounds (Meschyan &

Hernandez, 2005). When a language’s sounds are consistently represented by one grapheme

the language is ‘transparent’, whereas if more than one phoneme represents a grapheme or

vice versa the language is ‘opaque’ (Spencer & Hanley, 2003). English has an opaque

orthography and a number of studies have been carried out to show that opaque orthographies

are acquired at a considerably slower rate than transparent orthographies (Goswami, Gombert

& de Barrera, 1998; Spencer & Hanley, 2003; Wimmer, 1993; Wimmer & Hummer, 1990).

Research has also shown that phonological awareness skills can develop more slowly in

children learning to read an opaque orthography and phonological awareness skills have been

shown to correlate with success in reading ability in children (Goswami & Bryant, 1990;

Spencer & Hanley, 2003). The difference in transparency between orthographies can have an

impact on general stage models for reading development across a range of orthographies and

must be borne in mind when discussing the stage models below.

3.1.1 Stage Models

Many researchers supporting stage models appear to broadly agree on a three-stage

process (Ehri, 1991, 1994, 1995; Frith, 1985) whereby learners begin with a direct focus on

word recognition (logographic phase), they then progress onto an indirect phase where

graphemic-phonemic correspondences are made (alphabetic phase), before finally focussing

                                                                                                                                                                                         2 Decoding is the process of accessing the meaning of a word through the translation (Cain, 2010: 214). 

  

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on words directly again (orthographic phase) (van de Craats et al., 2005; Frith, 1985;

Kurvers, 2006).

Ehri (1991) supports this three-stage model, however, she argues for the alphabetic phase

to be divided into two parts. Although the first stage and final stage have a direct focus on

word recognition, unlike the first, this level of reading is now automatised. This model has

served well as a framework of children’s reading development in English (Beech, 2005).

Chall’s (1983) stages of reading development and Ehri’s (1995) phase model bear similarities

in their progression (Beech, 2005), although Chall proposes six stages of reading

development.

3.1.2 Chall’s Stages of Early Reading Development

Chall’s (1983) stages begin with ‘Stage 0’ or the ‘Prereading Stage’ and end at ‘Stage 5’,

which represents fluent and fully developed reading. The following section will only describe

the first three stages, as the participants of this study are all in the lowest level ESOL class

(pre-entry) and, therefore, I am only concerned with the process of early reading

development.

Chall recognises, along with other researchers, that reading development is dependent

upon a number of other factors and she divides these into two main groups: environmental

and biological. Environmental factors include stimulation from home, school and the

community; whereas biological factors refer to the cognitive ability of an individual (Chall,

1983). Bernhardt (1991) agrees that there are also contributory factors in adults learning to

read in a second language; however the factors differ slightly from influencing factors for

children. These factors include a considerable difference in age and native languages across

  

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adult students, the individual’s motives for learning the language, literacy in the native

language and also oral proficiency in the L2 (Alderson, 2000; Burt, Peyton & Schaetzel,

2008).

READING PROCESS “STYLE”

MEDIUM OR

MESSAGE?

DECODING OR

MEANING EMPHASIS

PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR

COMPREHENSION

PREFERENCE FOR ORAL OR

SILENT READING

Stage 0 To Age 6

Top-down Message to Medium

Meaning Needs to know the stories that child pretends to read

Oral

Stage 1 Grades 1-2.5

Bottom-up Medium to message

Decoding (meaning)

Words and syntax Oral

Stage 2 Grades 2-3

Bottom-up to top-down

Medium and message

Decoding (meaning)

Familiarity of selections, words and syntax

Oral/silent

Stage 0 is also referred to as the ‘pseudo-reading’ stage as a way of representing the

creativity and replacement of words used (Chall, 1983). This stage covers the first 6 years of

the child’s life therefore a lot of changes occur throughout the stage, such as the awareness of

rhyme and alliteration (Chall, 1983). Chall claims that children living in a literate culture and,

in particular, with a Roman alphabetic writing system also acquire a subconscious knowledge

of letters and words (Chall, 1983). The most common errors from children in this stage are

substitutions of words, due to them guessing what is written, and also not being able to read

the words at all (Ilg & Ames, 1950).

Stage 1 involves learning the sets of letters and associating them with the appropriate

sounds (Chall, 1983). Chall argues for three phases within Stage 1, which will be useful when

applying her model to adults learning English as an L2 because it will give a clearer

indication of differentiation within the stages. The three phases she applies to Stage 1 are

from Biemiller (1970), where Phase 1 involves mainly word substitution errors, which bear

Table 1: Chall’s model for stages of early reading development (Chall, 1983:34)

  

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no semantic and syntactic similarities (Chall, 1983). Phase 2 develops in terms of the

importance of graphic accuracy and decoding. Children still make errors in this phase

however errors now share a graphic similarity to the print. Finally, Phase 3 still focuses on

decoding, but now the errors are less frequent and show semantic and graphic similarities to

the print. She argues that all children go through these phases within a single stage and they

are passed through in the same order (Chall, 1983).

Stage 2 primarily involves the development of fluent reading. The most important process

in this stage is to confirm what was learned in Stage 1 and to dramatically improve on

fluency by rereading stories (Chall, 1983). This gives the reader a chance to understand the

meaning of what is being said, instead of focussing on decoding. It has been argued that this

is the most important stage in the reading development process and that if the child is under-

achieving at the end of this stage, they will continue to under-achieve throughout their school

years (Kraus, 1973). Chall also comments on this stage being important in adult literacy

learning, with most adults completing Stage 1, but faltering on completion of Stage 2.

Chall’s model will be used in the discussion of the study to compare the results from the

schooled and unschooled L2 adults to children’s stages of reading development.

3.2 Schooled and unschooled L2 adults

Most of the very early studies of literacy acquisition for adults learning an L2 were based

on adults who were literate in their L1. The distinction was not made between literate and

non-literate adults and instead ‘L2 literacy acquisition’ was used as an umbrella term for all

adults (van de Craats et al., 2005). Recent research on L2 literacy acquisition recognises a

clear distinction between literate and non-literate adults (Kurvers, 2006; Wagner, 2004).

  

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3.2.1 Schooled adults

Extensive research has been carried out on adults learning to read in an L2 who are also

literate in the L1 (Bell, 1995; Geva, Wade-Woolley & Shany, 1997). It is commonly assumed

that literacy skills which are acquired in the L1 can be directly transferred to the L2 (Koda,

2004; Rutherford, 1983; Kilborn and Ito, 1989). However, others disagree with this in cases

where the L1 and the L2 use different writing systems, where it is argued that literacy in the

L1 is an obstacle (Bell, 1995). Bernhardt agrees that if the L1 is also written in the Roman

alphabet that these skills are transferred. However, many ESOL learners come from

languages that do not use a Roman alphabetic writing system and therefore these students

must learn to read in the L2 in a similar way to children (Bernhardt, 1991). My study could

provide further evidence on whether literacy in the L1 hinders or aids literacy in the L2 by

looking at the reading development process of non-literate adults and literate adults who can

read in a non-Roman alphabet learning English as an L2 and comparing their learning process

to that of children’s reading development.

Recent studies have shown that there are two significant predictors of L2 reading

comprehension and thus development; these are L2 language proficiency and L1 reading

comprehension (Asfaha et al., 2009). The schooled informants in this study are all highly-

educated3 and would therefore be expected to have a high rate of L1 reading comprehension.

3.2.2 Unschooled adults

Very little research has been carried out on unschooled adults learning to read for the first

time in the L2 (van de Craats et al., 2005; Kurvers, 2006; Urquhart & Weir, 1998; Wagner,

2004; Young-Scholten & Strom, 2006). In 2011, the Home Office released figures showing

  

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that 19,804 immigrants applied for asylum in Britain that year, with Iranians making the most

applications in total (Rogers, 2012). Many people seeking asylum in Britain do not possess

basic literacy skills in their first language due to literacy not being an imperative part of their

culture and also due to disruption of daily life. This reinforces the importance of research in

the field of unschooled adults learning to read in the L2.

It has been stated “We do not know if the stages [low-literate] L2 learners go through are

similar to how educated adults learn a second language” (van de Craats et al., 2005: 9). For

L2 instruction, it is fundamental to be aware of the differences in the reading development

process between schooled (literate) and unschooled (non-literate) adults and this study will

provide evidence for these differences.

Kurvers (2006) is one of the few researchers to carry out a study on L2 reading

development in unschooled adults and from this research concluded that these adults follow a

similar reading development process to children as well as Young-Scholten and Strom’s

(2006) research on unschooled L2 adults, as they concluded that L2 adults have an awareness

of syllable onset and rhyme prior to reading which is also true in Chall’s Stage 0.

Evidence suggests, however, that adults who have never learned to read in their L1 will

face many more difficulties in learning to read in the L2 than children learning to read.

Unschooled adults have been shown to have difficulties with attaining a suitable level of oral

proficiency (van de Craats et al., 2005; Young-Scholten & Strom, 2006) and as mentioned

above, L2 oral proficiency is one of the most important predictors for L2 reading

comprehension (Asfaha et al., 2009). As mentioned previously, the development of phonemic

awareness is hindered by an opaque orthography; this could, in turn, affect oral proficiency

and thus negatively impact on the development of reading comprehension in the L2. There

                                                                                                                                                                                         3 The students have had more than 10 years of formal education in the L1. 

  

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are also theories that there is a critical period for language learning (Bley-Vroman, 1990; van

de Craats et al., 2005; Lenneberg, 1967; Young-Scholten & Strom, 2006). These theories

claim that adults can no longer access universal grammar (UG henceforth) and as a result

cannot reset the parameters’ values of the L1 to those of the L2 (van de Craats et al., 2005).

Another theory is that there is an initial L2-state of grammar (van de Craats et al., 2005). This

theory bases itself on the learner having knowledge of the L1 and different degrees of transfer

can occur in order to access the L2 grammar (van de Craats et al., 2005). These theories must

also be considered when analysing the reading development of unschooled adults.

3.3 Overview

As pointed out above, the previous research carried out on unschooled (non-literate) adults

learning to read for the first time in English is scarce. Kurvers (2006) is the only researcher to

observe non-schooled adults’ reading development process and comparing it to the reading

process of children. However, Kurvers’ study was based upon adults learning Dutch as an L2.

Dutch possesses a transparent orthography, whereas, as previously explained, English has an

opaque orthography. This could affect the process of reading development and this study may

provide different results to Kurvers’ study.

  

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4. PARTICIPANTS AND DATA COLLECTION

4.1 Participants

Before collecting my data, informants for the study had to be chosen. I observed two pre-

entry classes at different colleges. One college had a classroom of predominantly unschooled

English L2 adults, whereas the other college had a mixture of both schooled and unschooled.

I asked the class teachers to divide their classes into three sections reflecting their level of

literacy. My intention was to select two schooled students and two unschooled students from

each level. However, I had an additional criterion, that the schooled students must be literate

in a non-alphabetic writing system. This was intended to prevent literate students transferring

literacy knowledge of the L1 across to the L2. If the literate students learn to read in an L2

with a different writing system to the L1, this will also provide evidence supporting or

opposing Bell’s (1995) claim that literacy in the L1 can be a hindrance to learning to read in

an L2 if the languages use different writing systems. This criterion made it very difficult to

find schooled participants at a low level because the majority of pre-entry level schooled

students were Portuguese and Latvian, with all of the Latvians having knowledge of French

and therefore the Roman alphabet4.

With the limited time frame and a lack of access to low level schooled students locally

who were also literate in a non-Roman alphabetic writing system, I made the decision to

                                                            4To begin with, literacy in a non-Roman alphabetic writing system was not imperative. All students excelled in reading the words aloud and reading the story in Task 3 as fluently as a native speaker of English. However, when they were asked simple questions such as “Who were the main people in the book?” to which the correct answer was “Ann and Ben”, none of the students knew the answer. This showed that their ability to sound out the words on the page was not a true reflection of their reading level. Their oral proficiency in English was extremely low and therefore these students were not useful as representatives of reading development in schooled students learning English as an L2. This is the reason for the criterion being strengthened to students who were not literate in a roman alphabetic writing system.   

  

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collect data from three schooled students each at a different level, which is half the number of

unschooled students in the study. In spite of the difference in numbers, the purpose of this

study is to assess the reading development process of schooled and unschooled adults

learning English as an L2 and the number of participants should still yield useful results. I

therefore have a total of nine informants. I chose informants who all had a reasonable level of

oral proficiency in the L2. This was important in order to test Asfaha’s, Beckman’s, Kurvers’

and Kroon’s claim that both L2 oral proficiency and L1 reading comprehension are

significant predictors of success in L2 reading comprehension. It was also important that the

students could understand what I was asking them to do in each task5.

The biographical information of each participant was collected such as age, gender, their

native country, native language, the writing system of their native language6, length of

residency in England, months spent at college, number of children and their marital status. It

is important to include biographical information in order to account for any unexpected

results, or to correlate any social information to the results of the data, which may provide

additional conclusions.

The biographical information in Table 2 is arranged according to the reading level of each

student in the classroom. RA, MM and HG are all schooled students and RA and MM were

both in pre-entry classes and HG was in an Entry 1 level class due to the lack of participants

that fit into my criteria. FB and TZ were both at the lowest level in the class, despite FB

having spent the longest amount of time at college. FM and DJ are at a higher level and were

also in a pre-entry level ESOL class and finally SS and SB are at the highest reading level

and therefore they have been placed at the right hand side of the table.

                                                            5 If the student had not been at a reasonable level of oral proficiency, an interpreter would have been essential in order to put each student at a fair advantage in the tasks. 6 This was only necessary for the schooled students. 

  

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  RA MM HG FB TZ FM DJ SS SB

Age 49 38 29 46 43 40 33 57 52

Gender F F M F F F F M F

Native Country

* P B I B B A A B B

Native Languag

e

Urdu (can read Arabic)

Bengali Persian

and Kurdish

Bengali Bengali Dari Dari Bengali Bengali

Writing system

Abjad/ consonant alphabet

Syllabic alphabet Abjad n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

Length of

residency in

England (years)

21 9 2.5 12 27 3 6 43 17

Time spent at college

(months)

24 30 12 42 6 36 36 18 18

Schooling in

Native Country (years)

16 10 14 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

No. of Childre

n 3 3 0 4 4 5 4 9 5

Married (Y/N) Y Y  Y  Y  Y  Y  Y  Y  Y 

*KEY P = Pakistan B = Bangladesh I = Iran A = Afghanistan

After talking to a few of the participants, I gathered additional personal information that is

not displayed in Table 2. RA has lived here for 21 years and her husband was born in

England and therefore she speaks good English. Also, all three of her children were born in

England and attend school here. It may seem like an anomaly that RA is at the lowest level of

reading of the schooled students when she is surrounded by people in her family who speak

very good English. However, she told me that when she practices her English, whether it is

speaking or writing, they laugh at her and so she always speaks in her native language around

Table 2: Biographical information collected from the participants of the present study

  

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them. She also said that she comes to the ESOL classes three mornings a week, but reads the

Qur’an five times a day and sometimes reads books in Urdu and she claimed that she forgets

how to read in English between each class. On the other hand, SB has been coming to college

for 18 months but had not attended every class due to her bad health. One would therefore

expect SB to have a very low reading level. However, she has five children one of whom has

attended Newcastle University to study an undergraduate degree followed by a Masters and is

currently studying for a PhD. This could provide SB with an incentive to learn English and

her son may help her. Chall (1983) along with many other researchers appreciate that other

influencing factors are present in adult learners and one cannot know a learner’s motivations,

environmental or biological factors without supporting detailed information.

4.2 Data Collection

In order to draw conclusions on whether schooled or unschooled adults use a similar

reading development process to children, data must be collected that will provide the

appropriate information for the different stages of reading development (see Appendix IV). In

order to correlate English L2 adults’ reading development with Chall’s stages of reading

development, appropriate tests must be developed. This will allow the participants to be

placed at the different stages of Chall’s (1983) reading model.

Firstly, the students’ level of reading will be assessed by using a word list. Kurvers (2006)

used this technique to assess the reading development of unschooled L2 adults and this has

influenced me to use this method in my study. I composed a list by selecting words from the

Jolly Phonics Word Book (Lloyd & Wernham, 2000). The use of phonics is one of the main

predictors of reading development and word recognition in a second language (Kurvers,

2006). It was also important to omit words that the readers may not understand so that the

  

18  

readers were not distracted by words they did not know the meaning of. Jolly Phonics is

intended for children learning English as their L1. However, it is also useful for teaching

adult beginners in learning English as a second language.

Jolly Phonics is a system that divides certain sounds into groups that reflect their level of

difficulty. Table 3 shows groups 1-7 in the Jolly Phonics Word Book (Lloyd & Wernham,

2000).

Group Sound

1 s a t i p n

2 c/k e h r m d

3 g o u l f b

4 ai j oa ie ee or

5 z w ng v oo oo

6 y x ch sh th th

7 qu ou oi ue er ar

Using word lists in data collection elicits decoding and prevents the reader from relying on

the context. Based on Chall, one would expect the students at the lowest level of literacy to

be able to decode groups 1-3, and the higher levels to be able to read the more complex

phonics. I used a system whereby if a student was unable to read or misreads more than five

words out of sixty from the list, I ended their test and their phonic level was estimateded (see

Appendix I).

Table 3: Jolly Phonics sound groups (Lloyd & Wernham 2000).

  

19  

The second task consists of three separate worksheets (A, B and C). The aim of this task

was to assess the reader’s ability to identify vowel sounds within a word7, as well as to test

their graphemic-phonemic awareness. A grapheme is the smallest unit of written language,

whereas a phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language (Lee, 1969). The use of phonics is

a way of eliciting the students’ knowledge of the relationship between graphemes and

phonemes (hence graphemic-phonemic awareness). Each worksheet displayed a number of

words containing a specific sound, as well as other words that do not contain the sound (see

Appendix II and Table 4). On worksheet A the sound was [e�], on worksheet B the sound

was [a�] and on worksheet C the sound was [u:]. These phonemes (and diphthongs) were

selected as familiar sounds to low-level students. I also decided to do a practice worksheet

where I could do the task together with the student and they could ask for help if necessary. I

did this in order to ensure that every student understood what was being asked of them in the

task.

Worksheet Sound Words

Practice

[i:]

bee leaf

sea sheep

A [e�]

rain eight late

away snake

B [a�]

tie might sky

satisfy mine

C [u:] use blue

chewing

                                                            7 All of the words were again chosen from the ‘Jolly Phonics Word Book’ (Lloyd and Wernham, 2000). 

Table 4: Vowel sounds to test graphemic-phonemic correspondence in Task 2.

  

20  

rule

At the beginning of each worksheet, the students were told the sound they were looking

for. If the student thought that the sound was present within a word, I would circle it (see

Appendix II) and score them after the task. The aim of this task was to assess the students’

graphemic-phonemic awareness and the knowledge that different letters can make the same

sound.

Finally, Task 3 involved reading a story that was composed for my previous study

(Cunnington, 2011) (see Appendix III). I designed a comprehension task consisting of five

questions8 based on the story. These began with simple questions and ended in a question

where the reader had to think beyond the words in the story.

The comprehension task took the form of a short story aimed at low-educated second

language learners of English. Wallace (2007) carried out a study to show that often children’s

books are not suitable for adults who are learning to read due to cross-cultural differences.

She gives the example of Anna, an unschooled student from Pakistan learning to read in

English. She is presented with a book called The Little Red Hen and fails to understand how a

hen can have human characteristics. Wallace claimed that because this did not match her real-

world experience, she could not understand the story (Wallace, 2007).

In order to design this comprehension task some colleagues and I collected data from a

college. Our results suggested that male and female low-educated learners of English would

prefer to read a story about love (see Cunnington, 2011). Therefore this became the subject of

                                                            8 The comprehension questions were:

1. Who were the main people in the story? (i.e. what were their names?) 2. How did Ben end up in hospital? 3. What gifts did Ann give to Ben? (Minimum of 2) 4. What was wrong with the flowers? 5. What happened next/ after the story? 

  

21  

our story and we then made linguistic decisions about the text in order to keep the grammar

as simple as possible. For this study, I adapted some of the lexicon slightly from our original

story in order to differentiate between levels. For example, most of the pronouns were

omitted but a few were retained for the higher level readers. Mostly one or two syllable

words were used, with the exceptions being: ‘ambulance’ and ‘chocolate’, however all of

these are concrete nouns and they are accompanied in the story with images. Illustrations are

used on every page because they are an efficient way of providing a translation indicator for

low-level readers of an L2. These linguistic decisions are described in more detail in

Cunnington (2011).

The purpose of this task was to elicit specific variables used in Chall’s (1983) model.

These variables include fluency, through an estimation of the time taken to read the story9

and also how many words they predicted or guessed from the story, either from the context or

from features in their oral grammar. The comprehension task will elicit the students’

approach to reading at their level (either ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’) and will also assess

whether the reader is focussing on decoding the words or the meaning of the story. The

results from this task will give an indication of the process of reading in schooled and

unschooled adults learning English as an L2 and this can then be compared to the stages of

Chall’s (1983) reading model.

The three sections of my data collection are based on Kurvers’ (2006) data collection

techniques. I have adapted her techniques of placing learners at different stages of reading

development to suit my study.

                                                            9 An exact time was not given because I did not want to put the readers under pressure. This could have affected their natural reading ability as they may have rushed or panicked.  

  

22  

5. RESULTS

Tables 5 and 6 show the results of the schooled and unschooled participants respectively

in task 1 (see Appendix I). The phonics level that the students reached10 is given along with a

percentage of how many words the students could decode overall out of a total of 60.

Student RA MM HG

Phonics level

Emerging into

Group 2.

Emerging into

Group 7, but read to the end of

the list.

Successful in

Group 7 and longer

words.

% of words decode

d

17% 75% 92%

Student FB TZ FM DJ SS SB

Phonics level

Working on Group 1 but some Group 2 words

decoded.

Emerging into

Group 2.

Working on Group 6

and emerging

into Group 7.

Working on

Group 6.

Completed word list.

Completed word list.

% of words decode

d

10% 12% 62% 55% 92% 95%

The results displayed in Table 5 and 6 show that there is a general progression in the

percentage of words that are read and also in the Jolly Phonics group that corresponds with

each level of reading. RA, FB and TZ, for example, appear to be beginning to recognise

Table 5: Schooled students’ results from Task 1.

Table 6: Unschooled students’ results from Task 1.

  

23  

Group 2 level words in the word list, regardless of whether they are literate in their native

language. There appears to be a noticeable jump from the level of FB’s and TZ’s to that of

FM and DJ in Table 6 with regards to both the phonics group reached and the percentage of

words that were decoded. There is an even larger difference between RA’s and MM’s

percentage of words decoded.

Another interesting point is that SS and SB both failed to read the word ‘zoo’ and ‘stray’.

This could be due to the infrequent use of ‘z’ in English spelling and the ‘str’ consonant

cluster could be due to difficulty with pronunciation and possibly an influence from L1

phonology.

As explained in the data collection section, Task 2 was divided into three parts: A, B and

C. This task involved the participants finding a particular sound within a range of words on

each worksheet. If the student thought the sound was present in any of the words, they would

point to it. The results from the three worksheets are given in Table 7 and 8 and an average

percentage is also given for an overall summary.

Sound RA MM HG A [e�]

(%) 37.5 87.5 75

B [a�] (%) 37.5 75.0 62.5

C [u:] (%) 57.0 57.0 71.0 AVERAGE SCORE

(%) 43.4 73.9 70

Sound FB TZ FM DJ SS SB A [e�] 62.5 50.0 50.0 62.5 62.5 87.5

                                                                                                                                                                                         10 Phonics level is given based on the Jolly Phonics framework. I used my own judgement on the number of words they decoded to place them at a level in the framework.  

Table 7: Unschooled students’ results from Task 2.

Table 8: Unschooled students’ results from Task 2.

  

24  

(%) B [a�]

(%) 62.5 62.5 62.5 50.0 75.0 87.5

C [u:] (%) 71.0 86.0 71.0 86.0 86.0 86.0 AVERAGE SCORE

(%) 65.2 65.2 61 65.2 73.9 87

This task was to analyse graphemic-phonemic awareness of the participants by using

sounds in the Jolly Phonics word book. In Table 8 it may seem odd that although FB and TZ

are at a lower reading level than FM and DJ, their scores for this task are similar. This was

not due to success in the task but a coincidence. FB and TZ achieved these scores through

selecting the letters on the worksheets. For example, when asked to find all the words

containing the sound [e�] TZ and FB selected every word containing the letter ‘a’ without

reading aloud a single word on the sheet and as a result of this, the students scored highly.

FB appeared to be at the lowest level of decoding as she proceeded to confuse the letter

‘n’ with the letter ‘u’ although Chall argues that most preschoolers can name the majority of

the letters in the alphabet (Chall, 1983). From these results it is clear that FB and TZ do not

yet possess a graphemic-phonemic awareness. They have shown knowledge of the Roman

alphabet, but nothing more than this. Therefore FB’s and TZ’s scores on this task were not a

true reflection of their ability.

DJ, on the other hand, scored the same as FB and TZ but tried to read all the words and

listen to each sound but sometimes she could not recognise the sound. SB scored the highest

mark of all the participants and did not choose any word incorrectly. She lost marks because

she missed a few words containing the sound which may be due to the speed she was doing

the task.

Interestingly, unlike the lowest level unschooled participants in Table 7, RA (the lowest

level schooled participant) scored the lowest of all the participants; however she did show

  

25  

knowledge of sound and the concept that the same sound can be represented by different

letters. Her low reading level hindered her ability to read all of the words.

Overall on this task, all schooled students showed a graphemic-phonemic awareness. MM

was also the only participant to realise that ‘chewing’ contained the sound [u:]. This

observation may be expected because schooled students are literate and would already

possess graphemic-phonemic awareness which can be transferred over to the L2. However,

unschooled students do not begin the reading process with the same awareness of the

principle of grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

Another point to make about this data is that SB in Table 8 has the highest score with

87%. However in Table 7, HG’s score is only 70% despite being at a high reading level. This

could suggest that for literate learners, the graphemic-phonemic correspondence is made in

the L2, but perhaps a certain level is reached where literacy in the L1 prevents the reader

from accessing more complex phonemes and producing and recognising the sounds in

English. The non-literate students appear to advance to a greater level perhaps due to English

being their first language of reading.

Finally, Task 3 was the reading task. From Table 9 and 10 we can see a clear increase

across the different levels of reading from the percentage of words decoded in the story as

well as a decrease in the number of words that were predicted or decoded.

  

26  

RA MM HG

Words decoded (%)

71.3 89.7 98.2

Words guessed/ predicted (%)

16 14 4

Time taken approx. (minutes)

23 20 5

Comprehension Score (out of 5)

4 1 4

FB TZ FM DJ SS SB Words decoded (%)

20.2 20.6 79.8 80.2 91.2 99.0

No. of words guessed/ predicted

36 28 20 13 18 3

Time taken approx. (minutes)

38 35 17 16 7 5

Comprehension Score (out of 5)

1 3 0.5 5 3 2

It is immediately noticeable how much lower FB’s and TZ’s (in Table 10) decoding

percentage is compared to RA’s in Table 9. This, along with the results from Task 2, gives

another indication that FB and TZ are at a much lower level of reading than RA and this will

be discussed in greater detail below.

There is also a clear correlation between the reading level of the student and the time

taken to read the story, which is unsurprising as this shows the reader is becoming more

fluent as the reading process develops.

Table 9: Schooled students’ results from Task 3.

Table 10: Unschooled students’ results from Task 3.

  

27  

The variable that does not appear to have any correlation to the reading level is the

comprehension score. Chall’s (1983) stages of reading development account for changes in

the focus of meaning and decoding throughout each stage and this will be discussed further in

the following chapter. The activities will now be applied to Chall’s (1983) stages of reading

development in order to arrive at a conclusion as to whether schooled or unschooled adults

follow a similar reading development process to English children.

Figure 1 gives a visual representation of the change in the variables measured in Task 3

throughout the reading development process. It is clear that whilst the percentage of words

decoded increases throughout the stages, the number of words that are guessed or predicted

generally decreases along with the time taken to read the story. The comprehension scores

have not been represented in Figure 1 because they do not seem to show any relationship with

reading development. Figure 1 also shows that FB and TZ are at a considerably lower level

compared to others in the study.

Figure 1: A graph showing the results from Table 9 and 10.

  

28  

  

29  

6. DISCUSSION

The results displayed previously can help form conclusions from the hypotheses given at

the beginning of the study. First of all, it was claimed that schooled (literate) adults would

advance at a much faster rate than unschooled (non-literate) adults due to claims that L1

literacy has a positive impact on L2 reading development (van de Craats et al. 2005; August

& Hakuta, 1997). By comparing the biographical information in Table 3 to the results of

reading development in the previous chapter, there does not appear to be a correlation

between the rate of development and literacy in an L1. The key data used to draw these

conclusions is the length of time the students have spent at college. HG has developed

through the reading development process faster than any other student, as he has only spent

12 months learning English in a formal setting, yet is at the highest stage of development out

of the schooled students. However, SB is also at the highest stage of reading development

and has spent 18 months at college, part of which she took time off due to illness. The lower

level students have attended college for a much longer period of time, particularly FB who

has been learning English for 42 months (the longest time out of all of the students). This

could suggest that fossilization11 has occurred which could account for FB being at the lowest

level of reading of all of the participants in the study in spite of her length of time at college.

I also predicted that schooled students would be more successful at the reading

comprehension task than unschooled students due to Asfaha’s et al’s conclusions that L1

reading comprehension and L2 oral proficiency are significant predictors of L2 reading

comprehension. As I chose students who all appeared to have a reasonable level of oral

proficiency in English and all of the schooled students had received more than 10 years of

  

30  

formal instruction in the L1, I expected that the schooled students would score highly on the

reading comprehension task; however this was not the case. Only one student (DJ) scored full

marks on this task and this student was in fact unschooled. The scores for the comprehension

task will be discussed in more detail later when comparing the results of the present study to

Chall’s stages of reading development.

Another hypothesis given at the beginning of the study was that the schooled adults would

have better graphemic-phonemic awareness than unschooled adults learning English as an

L2. This claim can be supported or reformulated from the results of Task 2 in Tables 7 and 8.

It was found that the method of scoring this task gave results that did not accurately reflect

the students’ knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence. However, it was previously

noted that, although RA scored the lowest mark on this task, she still showed awareness that a

single phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme, despite not being at a high

enough level to identify all of the words correctly. FB and TZ, on the other hand, only found

the graphemes that matched the phoneme of a single letter as previously explained. Therefore

from these results the hypothesis can be supported and it could be claimed that schooled

adults learning English as an L2 have a higher graphemic-phonemic awareness than

unschooled adults. It could be argued that this result could be accounted for by the

transparency of the L1 scripts of the schooled participants. Urdu has an opaque script

(Chaitra, Jyotsna, Narayanan & Hsin-Chin, 2011); however Bengali and Persian are generally

transparent with exceptions and occasional irregularities (Gunderson, D’Silva & Chen, 2011;

Raman, 2006). The graphemic-phonemic awareness of the schooled students, and particularly

RA, could be accounted for by the opacity of the L1 scripts that can be transferred over to the

L2. A suggestion for further research would be to see whether a low level reader of English

                                                                                                                                                                                         11 Where the development of the spoken language does not progress from errors and teaching cannot correct them (Schwartz, 1997; Han, 2004) and as mentioned previously, oral proficiency in the L2 is important for the process of reading development and comprehension (Asfaha et al., 2009).  

  

31  

would have a lower (or even no) graphemic-phonemic awareness if the L1 script was highly

transparent.

In order to arrive at conclusions to support the other hypotheses i.e. whether schooled or

unschooled adults learning English as an L2 follow a similar early reading development

process as children learning English as an L1 and whether unschooled adults start the reading

development process at a level lower than Stage 0 of Chall’s model, the results explained

above need to be compared to Chall’s (1983) stages of reading development.

Firstly, the three schooled students will be compared to Chall’s (1983) model. RA is at the

lowest level of reading as is clear from her low phonic level in Task 1, and low score in the

sound recognition task (Task 2) and the percentage of words decoded and number of words

guessed in Task 3. For this part of the discussion, the focus will be on Task 3, the reading and

comprehension task. It is clear from Table 9 and Figure 1 that RA read fewer words than MM

or HG and also guessed the most words, which indicates that she is not a strong reader,

however, when the comprehension task scores are considered, she scored 4 out of 5. This

correlates with Stage 0 of Chall’s model, as she could not decode many of the words, yet

scored highly on the comprehension section showing that she was focussing on the meaning

of the story but her fluency was poor. Another point to make here is that in Task 1, RA only

read 17% of the word list showing that she was not strong at reading words out of a context

(i.e. in a story), yet in Task 3 she decoded 71.3% of the text. This provides further evidence

to support her focussing on the meaning and that she is at Stage 0 of Chall’s (1983) model.

MM is at a higher reading level and this is shown by her ability to decode substantially

more words in the word list, i.e. out of a context in Task 1. She also scored highly on Task 2,

reflecting a good graphemic-phonemic awareness and, interestingly, this is higher than HG’s

score in Task 2. This could be accounted for by Persian (HG) being more opaque in

  

32  

orthography than Bengali (MM) (Gunderson et al., 2011; Raman, 2006). In Task 3, MM

guessed words, but correctly decoded almost 90% of the book. Despite a higher decoding

ability, MM only scored 1 out of 5 in the comprehension task. If the results are correlated

with Stage 1 of Chall’s model, the focus at this stage is on decoding and using a bottom-up

style of processing. MM appears to reflect the characteristics of this stage and her high score

in Task 1 shows that she is good at reading words out of context, suggesting that, unlike RA,

MM is not just focussing on meaning. MM also reads the story three minutes faster than RA,

suggesting that she is at a higher stage in the reading development process.

HG also appears to follow Chall’s model of reading development and corresponded to the

criteria at Stage 2 of the model. HG read almost every word in Task 1, showing that he does

not rely on context to read words. In Task 3 HG also read almost every word of the book,

only guessed at four words and also scored 4 out of 5 in the comprehension task. These

results show that HG is focussing on the meaning as well as decoding, which correlates with

Stage 2 of Chall’s model as she claims that the primary focus is on the decoding and then the

meaning is accessed from this. Thus, both bottom-up and top-down processing is used. Chall

(1983) claims that the main focus of Stage 2 is fluency and it is clear from Table 9 that HG is

considerably more fluent that MM. In Stage 2 the preference changes from oral reading to

either oral or silent reading and HG shows evidence of this as he whispers parts of the story

and is the only participant in the study to do so. It is also important to note here that although,

RA and HG appear to be approaching the reading process indirectly (top-down), the process

for HG is automaticity (Ehri, 1991, 1994; Frith, 1985). Overall, it is clear from the analysis of

the data that schooled adults learning English as an L2 follow a very similar reading

development process to children.

The unschooled participants however, appear to follow a different reading development

process to schooled adults and children by beginning at a reading level lower than Chall’s

  

33  

Stage 0. First of all, FB read the fewest number of words in Task 1 (10%). She also showed

no grapheme-phoneme distinction or awareness and could not distinguish an ‘n’ from a ‘u’.

Chall claims that even children at the lowest level of reading can name letters of the alphabet

(Chall, 1983). However, Ehri and Frith believe that all learners begin with at a logographic

phase (Ehri, 1991, 1994, 1995; Frith, 1985) where logos are recognised. Table 10 shows that

FB took the longest time (38 minutes) to read the story and she also decoded the fewest

words, the majority of which were words such as ‘Ben’, ‘Ann’, ‘it’, ‘is’ and ‘and’. She also

scored a very low comprehension score of 1 out of 5. As mentioned previously, this is

unexpected because FB has been learning English in a formal environment for the longest

amount of time, but this could be due to fossilization of language learning that is hindering

her reading development, or it could be due to an undiagnosed problem such as dyslexia. TZ

shows similar results to FB in all three activities, except for the comprehension score, in

which she scores 3 out of 5. If the results of TZ and FB are compared to Stage 0 of Chall’s

reading development model and to RA, it is clear that neither TZ nor FB fit into this stage.

The focus is not on the meaning, particularly for FB, but the decoding score is also poor,

particularly in comparison to RA. This could provide evidence to support a stage below Stage

0 of Chall’s (1983) reading development model, where the focus is on decoding, but the

process is so slow that the readers may find it hard to access the meaning. TZ appears to be

moving towards Stage 0, as her comprehension score is higher. TZ has spent the shortest

amount of time (6 months) learning English and unlike FB her low level of reading is to be

expected.

FM is at the next reading level of the unschooled participants in the present study, she

decoded 62% of the word list in Task 1, suggesting that she does not have difficulty reading

words that are out of context. FM shows evidence of having grapheme-phoneme awareness in

Task 2, placing her at a higher level than TZ and FM. In Task 3, FM scores similar results to

  

34  

RA, as shown in Table 10. The main difference is her comprehension score (0.5 out of 5),

which is the lowest score out of all of the participants. If we compare FM’s results to Stage 0

of Chall’s model, where the main focus at this level is meaning, it is clear that FM cannot be

placed at this stage. She could fit into Stage 1 of Chall’s reading development model,

however MM was better at decoding and read a higher percentage of words in Task 1 and 3.

This could be accounted for by Biemiller’s (1970) sub-stages within Stage 1 of Chall’s

(1983) model. FB would fit into Phase 2 where the focus is on graphic accuracy in decoding,

but quite a few errors are still made (Chall, 1983), whereas MM would fit into Phase 3 where

the errors are much less frequent (Chall, 1983).

DJ could be described as an anomaly in the data as she appears to fall into Stage 0 of

Chall’s model yet she is the only participant to score full marks on the comprehension task

and high marks for decoding in both Task 1 and 3. DJ even shows a better graphemic-

phonemic awareness than RA, who was placed at Stage 0. She doesn’t appear to be at Stage 2

either, because she does not score as highly as HG, SS and SB, who all achieve higher scores

than her in the decoding tasks. Also, the main focus at Stage 2 is fluency (Chall, 1983) and

DJ is not very fluent, particularly compared to HG, SS and SB. This finding provokes

consideration of the question: ‘what defines a strong reader?’ Is understanding and

comprehension more important than decoding or vice versa? Or is the combination of the two

the most important?12

SS and SB are at the highest level of reading of the unschooled students. They both

completed the word list in Task 1, showing that they can decode words out of context. In

Task 2, SB scored the highest of all of the participants for graphemic-phonemic awareness

and, as explained in the previous chapter, she did not choose any words incorrectly. This

                                                            12 These questions are beyond the scope of the present study; however it would be an interesting issue to investigate further.  

  

35  

could suggest that the transparency of orthography is the most important in the early stages of

reading development. This is supported by FB’s and TZ’s failure to understand the task and

RA’s understanding of a grapheme-phoneme correspondence despite being at a low reading

level. In Task 3, SB decoded 99% of the book and guessed only three words, which are the

highest scores of all the participants. SS and SB also read the story considerably faster than

DJ and FM. This correlates with the main focus of Stage 2 of Chall’s model: fluency. SS’s

and SB’s comprehension scores in Table 9 also show that they can access meaning of the

text.

The results of the present study have therefore presented a different outcome to Kurvers’

study on reading development in unschooled adult L2 learners. Kurvers found that

unschooled adults follow a similar reading development process to children, whereas I have

found that only schooled (literate) adults follow a similar reading development process to

children. This result was also unexpected because literacy in the L1 should either help or

hinder literacy development in the L2; one would expect a difference in the development

process compared to children. This difference could be accounted for by the difference in L2

orthographies. Kurvers researched adults learning Dutch as an L2, whereas this study

concerns adults learning English as an L2. As explained previously, English writing involves

an opaque orthography and is arguably one of the hardest languages to learn to read as an L1

and L2 (Gunderson et al., 2011: 17). Dutch, on the other hand, has a transparent orthography

making the language easier to decode (Rispens & Parigger, 2010). Kurvers did not compare

the unschooled students in her data with highly-educated schooled students, therefore one

cannot know if schooled adults learning Dutch as an L2 would learn to read in a similar way

to unschooled adults.

  

36  

7. CONCLUSION

Conclusions can be formulated regarding the hypotheses given below made at the

beginning of the present study:

• Unschooled adults will follow a similar reading development process to L1 children,

based on previous research by Kurvers (2006).

• Schooled adults will advance through the reading development process at a faster rate

than unschooled adults and children.

• Unschooled adults will begin the reading development process at a level lower than

Stage 0 of Chall’s (1983) model.

• Schooled adults will generally be more successful at the reading comprehension task

than the unschooled students.

• Schooled adults will have a higher graphemic-phonemic awareness compared to

unschooled adults.

First of all, it was predicted that low level schooled adults would have a better knowledge of

grapheme-phoneme correspondences than unschooled adults. However, this could be due to

the L1 script having an opaque orthography, perhaps allowing skills to be transferred to the

L2. In order to test this claim further, a range of low level readers with differing degrees of

transparency in their L1 script were tested on their graphemic-phonemic awareness in English

and their results could be correlated with the transparency of the L1 orthography.

There is evidence in the results to support a stage below Stage 0 of Chall’s model. At this

level adults are focussing so intensely on decoding (which is still very poor) the student

  

37  

cannot access the meaning. TZ and FB, who were placed at this level, below Stage 0, were

also very slow at reading and could only decode very simple words that were repeated. This

level could also contain sub-stages because, although FB and TZ appear to be at a very

similar stage, TZ’s comprehension score is higher suggesting that she is moving towards

Stage 0 of Chall’s (1983) model.

The results of the present study do not show a difference in rate of development through

the reading process. However, FB does appear to have an influencing factor which might be

preventing her from progressing through the reading development process after over three

years learning English in a formal environment. As explained this could be due to

fossilization of the L2 affecting her phonological processing and, in turn, affecting her

reading development, or it could be a condition affecting the reading such as dyslexia;

however these issues cannot be addressed in the present study.

It can also be claimed that from the results of the present study, reading comprehension

ability in the L2 is not necessarily determined by the reading comprehension ability in the L1,

as both schooled and unschooled students showed understanding of the text and the student

scoring the highest reading comprehension score was an unschooled adult. This, therefore,

does not support Asfaha et al.’s claim that L1 reading comprehension and L2 oral proficiency

are significant predictors of L2 reading comprehension.

Finally, the main conclusion from the present study is that schooled adults follow a very

similar early reading development process to children based on Stages 0, 1 and 2 of Chall’s

(1983) model. Although this result was not expected due to Kurvers’ study on unschooled

adults learning Dutch as an L2, the transparency of Dutch compared to English could be the

reason for the difference in results. It can, therefore, be claimed that schooled students

learning English as an L2 follow a similar reading development process to children learning

  

38  

English as an L1 and that this is due to the low degree of transparency of its orthography.

This is an important claim for current research on reading development in both schooled and

unschooled adults learning English as an L2.

In addition to the further research that has already been suggested, it would also be useful

to conduct a similar study testing schooled and unschooled adults’ reading development in

English but with equal numbers of schooled and unschooled participants, as the higher the

number of participants, the stronger the claims that can be made to complement the findings

of the present study. Another suggestion could be to test the same participants of the present

study with three different texts of similar length and difficulty, but different content. This

would test the reliability of my results.

I hope these results will encourage further research on the different processes of schooled

and unschooled L2 literacy development.

  

39  

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APPENDIX I

Task 1

Activity 1 

sit  pin tin 

tap  on and

red  map let 

hat  men end

test  rent rest

hand  stamp spend

best  milk soft

flag  step slim

wait  paint mail

jump  boat feet

swim  swing zoo

too  book every

Activity 1 

 

yellow  rash thing

this  chin daily

quick  Tuesday statue

faster  charge about

might  stray made

tomorrow yesterday station

education always number

because  flower enjoying

APPENDIX II

Task 2

ACTIVITY 2 WORKSHEET A  

 

   pond 

nest 

late 

snake 

away

rain

eight

sang

ACTIVITY 2 WORKSHEET B  

 

   might 

sky 

satisfy 

tie

mine

love

girl

day 

ACTIVITY 2 WORKSHEET C  

 

   chewing

blue

rule

use 

shop 

need 

dish 

APPENDIX III

Task 3

Today is Monday. Ben needs food.

Ben is crossing the road. He does not look.

A car is driving fast. The driver is not looking.

Ben screams.

The driver stops. The driver helps Ben. The driver calls 999.

The ambulance comes. The ambulance takes Ben to the hospital.

Ben’s leg is broken. The doctor puts a cast on the leg.

A nurse comes in. Her name is Ann.

Ann gives Ben food.

Ben says ‘Thank you.’ Ben likes Ann. Ann has pretty eyes.

Today is Tuesday. Ben is sad.

Ann comes in. Ann brings flowers for Ben.

But a bee is in the flowers. The bee stings Ben.

Ben says “Don’t worry”. Ben likes Ann.

Today is Wednesday. Ann comes in. Ann has fruit for Ben.

But an apple is rotten. Ben says “Don’t worry.” Ben likes Ann.

Today is Thursday. Ann comes in.

Ann brings chocolate for Ben. But Ben does not like chocolate. Ben says “Never mind.” He likes Ann.

Today is Friday. Ann comes in again. Ann has a card for Ben.

But Ben can’t read. “Don’t worry,” says Ben. Ben likes Ann a lot.

Today is Saturday. A new nurse comes in. Ben is sad. He misses Ann.

The doctor comes in. The doctor says, “You can go home.”

Ben wants to say good-bye to Ann. The doctor says, “Ann is at home today.” Ben is sad.

Ben is at home. Ben needs food.

Ben is crossing the road. Ben does not look.

Someone stops Ben. It is Ann! Ben is very happy.

Ben and Ann are crossing the road. Ben and Ann do not look.