Second and Foreign Language Reading Issues

View of second language reading

This chapter discuss the issues in reading related to the relationship between first language
reading ability, second language proficiency, and second language ability. In this case, the first
language readers and second language readers differ in 3 ways:

1. Learners’ pre-existing reading in first language might influence their concept of reading
and the they tend to transfer it to the second language
2. In reading, the first language readers typically begin when the speaking is relatively
advanced in their language but it is not occur in second language readers.
3. There is cognitive difference between child first language readers and adult second
language readers.

In this case, there are two contrasting views of second language learners according to Anderson
in 1984. They are Jolly 1978 and Cody 1974 vs Yorio 1971 and Clarke 1978-1980. Both Jolly
and Cody argue that success in reading foreign language depends on success of the first language
activity rather than the readers’ level of English ability. Another views come from Yorio and
Clarke believe that the problem in reading especially on second language is generally the result
of imperfect knowledge of the language. After those two contrasting views, Anderson points out
2 possible hypothesis such as:

1. Poor first language readers will read poorly in the foreign language and good first
language readers will read well in the second language.
2. The poor reading of foreign language is because the inadequate knowledge of the target
language.

In other hand, there is another argument from Goodman who stated that there is no absolute
language threshold because there is only single process that underlies reading. No matter what
the language background or the proficiency of the readers, the real difference is not in the
process but how well it controlled.

Research in reading related to the relationship between the first language and the second
language reading ability is purely correlational. It can create 2 potential problems in generalizing
the findings. The first problem is there are numerous of research of bilinguals don’t use Balanced
Bilinguals which make conflict in result and in conclusion. The second problem is some people
have questions related to the sources of variability in the first language ability. The questions is
why some subject are identified as not being good readers in their first language?. In this case,
the studies use adult and some use school-age subject. It is difficult to notice a good readers
when we are dealing with adults and with children across level.
Research into first language relationship

Perlans, Brunten, and Pohlman in 1989 observe about the relationship of the first reading ability.
They placed 158 Japan students into 1 of 3 level based on TOEFL score. The result show that the
learners were relatively weak in their relationship between first language reading and second
language reading at level 1 and 2 but at level 3 shows that the first reading skill have higher
correlation with second reading skill. It can be a proof that the first language readers begin to be
able to transfer the first language reading skills and strategies.