Testing the Self-Teaching Hypothesis in Children Learning to Read French as a Second Language

• In Event: Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: Testing the Self-Teaching Hypothesis in Children Learning to Read French as a Second Language

Abstract

The self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995) proposes that readers acquire orthographic knowledge through decoding. We evaluate the generalizability of this theory to English-French children by contrasting the ability to learn pseudowords containing shared orthographic patterns in English and French (e.g., -ore) and those that are unique to French (e.g., -sse). Participants were 52 English-French children in grades 4 and 6. Consistent with self-teaching, students performed better than chance on identifying target pseudowords. Furthermore, while no difference in learning words with shared and unique orthographic patterns was observed, we found that second language affected processing of these words when they were encountered in first language. We interpret these findings within a model of self-teaching as applied to second language reading.

Authors

• Sheila Cira Chung, University of Toronto

• Helene Deacon

• Xi Chen, University of Toronto - OISE