How does literacy in L1 (mother language) influence the acquisition of a L 2 (foreign language)

As a teacher of EFL I have found that many students have problems linked to literacy in being
successful in learning a foreign language so I would like to investigate the relationship between literacy
in L 1 and success in L 2 learning. In other words how does the communicative competence in L1 help
or impair the acquisition of another language ?