Phonological awareness in English second-language learners: language-specific differences between Southern Sotho and English affecting the acquisition of early reading skills in English

English: Article 1: In order to examine the development of phonological awareness skills in a first and in a second language, it is important first to focus on the significance of early reading skills (such as phonological awareness skills) and how these support beginner reading. Early reading skills in alphabetic languages include the knowledge that printed words carry messages, that words have an internal sound structure (phonological awareness) and that symbols more or less represent sounds in words. The development of phonological awareness skills as well as direct instruction in letter-sound correspondences therefore help to acquire crucial early reading skills such as sight-word reading. Converging research findings indicate that phonological awareness is regarded as the single most important factor predicting reading ability as well as reading disability during the early literacy phase. Phonological awareness is part of larger construct known as phonological processing. Research results indicate that phonological processing represents two dimensions, namely coding and awareness. Phonological coding processes include phonetic and phonological re-coding in short- and long-term memory. Awareness refers to an oral phonological processing ability and indicates an awareness of all sizes of sound units in a language. Phonological awareness skills refer to the ability to perform a variety of graded tasks, such as segmenting, blending, identifying and manipulating sound units in words. Implicit awareness of sounds in a language develops spontaneously as part of normal language development. As a child acquires more words (vocabulary) explicit awareness of sound units develop at the level of the word, syllable and the onset-rime. The most sophisticated level of phonological awareness will be awareness of individual phonemes in words and the ability to manipulate them in words. Explicit phoneme awareness will only be present once reading instruction starts. The developmental sequence of phonological awareness skills in languages representing transparent orthographies (e.g. Southern Sotho) follow the language-universal pattern, i.e. development at word, syllable, onset-rime and phoneme levels, but may be easier due to the direct sound-symbol relationship that exists between phonemes and their corresponding symbols. The greatest challenge for African learners, however, will be the written representation of words due to the disjunctive (Nguni languages) or conjunctive way (Sotho languages) in which words are represented in these languages. The way that words are represented in African languages cause problems to identify word boundaries in African languages. Southern Sotho beginner readers therefore need to develop early reading skills that will support not only reading but also spelling and writing skills in their L1. Well-developed linguistic skills in the 11 transfer as metalinguistic skills to support the acquisition of similar skills in a L2. The development of phonological awareness skills in English as L1 may be more difficult due to the many irregular sound-symbol correspondences that exist in words in English. Segmentation and manipulation skills are the best predictors of early reading ability in English. The development of phonological awareness skills in English as a second language will show similarities but also significant differences to the development of phonological awareness skills in Southern Sotho as L1. Language-specific differences (phonological, morphological and orthographic) that exist between languages significantly influence the development of reading skills in a L2, in particular, if the two languages display no similarities. ESL learners may subsequently develop phonological awareness skills at a different rate, in a different order as well as achieving different levels of phonological awareness when transferring to English as L2. Additional factors such as oral proficiency, vocabulary and background knowledge also contribute to the problems that ESL learners experience to becoming literate in English as L2. It is therefore recommended that literacy instruction should initially focus on L1 reading skills because of its positive impact on the development of second language reading skills. Learners should develop a wide range of phonological awareness skills through oral language activities to reach the crucial stage of 'reading readiness' in order to start their reading instruction in English. Article 2: Research studies investigating the universal and language-specific characteristics of literacy development found that phonological awareness skills make a significant contribution to the acquisition of early literacy skills in languages with transparent, as well as in languages with opaque orthographies. However, there are fundamental differences between African languages and languages such as English which have European roots. Language-specific differences that exist between the L1 and the L2 impact on the acquisition of early reading skills such as phonological awareness. The following languagespecific differences between Southern Sotho and English affecting the acquisition of early reading skills were identified: o Origin Southern Sotho is part of the language subfamily Sotho, which originated from the Niger-Congo language group of Africa. English, part of the Germanic subgroup originated from the Indo-European language family. Southern Sotho and English, two of the eleven official languages of South Africa, display significant language-specific differences due to their genetic classification. These differences will impact on the development of literacy skills of Southern Sotho learners transferring to English as medium of instruction. o Structural differences Southern Sotho is classified as a synthetic language, and words display agglutinative characteristics in word formation. Structural analysis often precedes or accompanies the teaching of sight-word reading during the early literacy phase. The identification of word boundaries is also a problem area in African languages. Confusion with regard to word boundaries will impact on the development of phonological awareness skills in Southern Sotho. English, also classified as a synthetic language, represent a combination of the isolating, agglutinative and fusional morphological varieties in word formation. Words in English also display many language-specific word structures, e.g. initial consonant clusters, consonant blends and rhyme that are absent in Southern Sotho. Negative transfer from Southern Sotho to English will influence the development of phonological awareness skills in English as well as the ability to perform phonological awareness tasks in English. o Phonological differences The phonemic inventory of a language is language-specific as it contains the specific sounds of the language. The development of phonological awareness in a L2 may be more difficult if languages display few similarities in respect of their phonemic inventories. The different phonemic inventories of Southern Sotho and English may lead to many phonological transfer errors, such as allophonic, phonetic and distributional errors when Southern Sotho ESL learners transfer to English as L2. o Prosodic differences. Prosodic differences between Southern Sotho and English influence the ability to perform phonological awareness tasks in English, such as segmentation of words into syllables, onset-rimes and phonemes. For example, tone in Southern Sotho has a semantic function. By contrast, in English, stress has a semantic function and is used to distinguish between nouns and verbs. Pronunciation of the L1 influences phonological processing abilities such as phonological recoding in long-term memory. Errors in phonological re-coding lead to retrieval mismatches and will result in poor phonological awareness skills in English as L2. o Orthographic differences Southern Sotho represents a transparent orthography using the disjunctive way of writing words. English on the other hand, is represented by an opaque orthography employing the conjunctive way of writing words. These differences will impact on the development of phonological awareness skills as well as decoding skills in Southern Sotho and in English. It is therefore recommended that: • Language educators should obtain as much information as possible regarding the pronunciation system of their learners' first language, and compare it to the sound system of English. • Educators of ESL learners must acquire a broad repertoire of skills for teaching the grapheme-phoneme relationships in English to learners who may be unfamiliar with the English sound system. • Southern Sotho learners should develop phonological awareness by means of activities that support not only reading but also writing skills in order to improve all language skills in English. Article 3: Research studies indicate that phonological awareness in words in the primary language is the most important predictor of reading ability as well as reading disability during the early literacy phase. However, language-specific differences (e.g. phonological, morphological and orthographic differences at word level) between languages seem to influence the correlation between phonological awareness and reading ability. To determine the influence of language-specific differences between Southern Sotho and English on the above-mentioned correlation the following research questions were raised: • Will language-specific differences between Southern Sotho and English affect the level of phonological awareness skills of Southern Sotho learners in English as L2? • Will language-specific differences impact on the correlation between phonological awareness skills and sight-word reading in Southern Sotho and in English as L2? One hundred and twenty grade 3 Southern Sotho learners aged 9 to 10 years participated. Approximately sixty learners were assigned to two groups: mothertongue instruction and instruction through the medium of English during the Foundation Phase. To address the first research question, both groups were tested on phonological awareness tests in Southern Sotho and in English to determine their level of phonological awareness in their mother tongue and in English as L2. A sentence segmentation test was also introduced to test the ability of Southern Sotho learners to segment sentences into words as this a problem area in African languages. The result from this test revealed that only 14% of Southern Sotho learners could correctly identify words in sentences in their L1, and 44% of ESL Southern Sotho learners could correctly identify the number of words in English sentences. This basic linguistic concept must be addressed during the early literacy phase in Southern Sotho and in English as L2. The results from the phonological awareness tests in Southern Sotho and in English indicated that Southern Sotho learners in both groups perform at the phonemic level, i.e. at the intermediate level between syllable awareness and the most sophisticated level of phoneme manipulation. Both groups had the lowest scores on phonological awareness tasks that represent linguistic structures that are absent in Southern Sotho. This is a clear indication that language-specific differences between Southern Sotho and English significantly influence the level of phonological awareness skills in English as L2. The results from the sight-word reading tests revealed that although both groups of Southern Sotho learners achieved the same level of phonological awareness, Southern Sotho mothertongue learners performed better on the sight-word reading tests in their L1 than their counterparts in English as L2. This may be due to the fact that it is easier to achieve early reading success in phonetic languages. To address the second research question two correlations were drawn to test the relationship between phonological awareness and an aspect of reading ability, namely sight-word reading in both languages. o Correlation 1: Results from Southern Sotho learners in the SPAT and the SEPAT were correlated with results obtained from standardised reading and spelling tests in both languages. o Correlation 2: The results from Southern Sotho learners in the oral subtests of the SEPAT and the SPAT were correlated with their results in the non-word reading and spelling tests of the SEPAT and the SPAT. The results from Correlation 1 and 2 indicate that for both groups the correlation coefficient is between 0.4 - 0.6, indicating a moderate to a high correlation between the two variables. This is however, not an indication of a causal relationship. Additional factors, e.g. in this study, language-specific differences between the L1 and L2 also contribute to the relationship between the variables. It is therefore recommended that: • Direct and specific instruction is given regarding the sound-symbol relationship that exists in words in English (phonics instruction). • The mother tongue should be used as the medium of instruction for as long as possible in order to develop cognitive academic skills in all learners. • A standardised Southern Sotho phonological awareness test is developed as a diagnostic test to identify Southern Sotho learners who are risk for future reading problems.