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Rate of Acquiring and Processing L2 Color Words in Relation to L1 Phonological Awareness
Author(s) -
HU CHIEHFANG
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00685.x
Subject(s) - psychology , color term , phonological awareness , context (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , relation (database) , phonology , linguistics , computer science , literacy , paleontology , pedagogy , philosophy , database , biology
This study examined the effect of first language (L1) phonological awareness on the rate of learning new second language (L2) color terms and the rate of processing old color terms. Two groups of 37 children participated; they differed on L1 phonological awareness measured at Grade 3. At Grade 5, over multiple trials, the children learned new L2 color terms interspersed with known color terms. They also rapidly named a series of familiar L2 color terms. Results revealed that children with lower phonological awareness acquired new color terms more slowly and less accurately than their peers with higher phonological awareness. In the same learning context, however, they were comparable to their peers with the old color terms. They also were slower in naming familiar color terms though they named the colors as accurately as their peers with more acute phonological awareness. These results suggest that poorer L1 phonological awareness slows the rate of acquiring new L2 words and has a persistent effect on the subsequent development of the efficiency in processing the words.