Component skills analyses for Japanese adult second language readers: The role of cognitive and linguistic skills and processing speed in predicting reading performance

The research addressed two theoretical issues: the role of lower-level processing skills in reading and the transfer of first language (L1) processing skills to second language (L2) reading among adult Japanese learners of English.;The second study addressed the issue of L1 - L2 transfer. Some aspects of word recognition processing, such as phonological processing, transfer cross-linguistically between alphabetic languages and also between typologically distant languages for bilingual children. It is not clear whether this holds true for adult readers who acquire their L2 literacy subsequent to their L1 literacy. The second study investigated whether this transfer can be observed for the EFL (English as a foreign language) reading of Japanese adults.;The accuracy and speed of processing skills at the word and text levels in English and Japanese were analyzed for 62 Japanese undergraduate students learning English in Japan. Their cognitive, linguistic, and sub-word processing skills were measured.;The results of the first study underscore the importance of phonological and orthographic processing skills in explaining adults' L2 reading performance at the word and text levels. The study adds to the literature that discusses the importance of lower-level processing skills for the reading performance of second language learners (Grabe, 1988; Koda, 1996, 2005; Nassaji & Geva, 1999).;The component skills of word recognition are crucial predictors of literacy acquisition for English children and adult English as a second language (ESL) readers (Koda, 2005). Nassaji and Geva (1999) demonstrated the importance of these skills for adult L2 readers whose first language was alphabetic (Farsi). However, the involvement of these processes in the English L2 reading performance of adults whose L1 orthography is typologically distant is still unclear. The first study investigated whether component processing skills explained the English L2 reading performance of Japanese students, whose L1 orthography is nonalphabetic.;In the second study, there was a limited correlation between the L1 and L2 accuracy scores, possibly reflecting orthographic differences. Although the participants' L1 and L2 phonological processing skills did not correlate, the speed of executing tasks correlated between English and Japanese, suggesting that processing speed may be an underlying skill.