Journal 3

Do you think L1 reading skills transferred to L2 readin skills? How about your case?



I agree with the fact that the first language (L1) skills transfer to second language (L2) learning.

There are several researches for that matter. It is already discovered that L1 word decoding, spelling, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, and listening comprehension skill administered in early ages were used as predictors of L2 reading (word decoding, comprehension) and spelling skills in later. I think that the greater the similarity in the writing systems of the two languages, the greater the degree of transfer.

In my case, it was a bit easier for me to learn Japanese than English. I guess it's because Korean and Japanese have the same word order. Moreover, Japanese language is essentially based on chinese characters and also,most Korean words are made of Chinese characters.
Accordingly, I probably could use my L1 reading skills that I've used to read Korean(L1) texts while I read Japanese(L2) text. As an similar example, the students who use alphabetic- decoding system in their language such as Spanish can learn English easier, because both languages share the alphabetic principle.

Therefore, This suggests that students learn to read and spell their L1, then reading skills(word decoding, spelling comprehension, etc) transfer from L1 to L2.