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Relationships Between Metalinguistic and Spelling Development Across Languages : Evidence from English and Hebrew

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Relationships Between Metalinguistic and Spelling Development Across Languages : Evidence from English and Hebrew RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN METALINGUISTIC AND SPELLING DEVELOPMENT ACROSS LANGUAGES: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH AND HEBREW Miriam Ruth Bindman Child Development and Learning Institute of Education University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 1997 2 ABSTRACT Metalinguistic awareness is transferable between oral and written forms of language, and between different languages. Recent research has established a connection between monolingual children's grammatical awareness and their morphological spelling knowledge. Studies of bilingual children have shown that phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge transfer across languages, even if the languages are dissimilar and are written with different scripts. This study investigates transfer of grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge across dissimilar languages and scripts. In spoken language, children learn not only surface-level language 'facts' specific to that language (e.g. vocabulary) but also deeper-level grammatical principles (e.g. morphological and syntactic relationships), which govern other languages. Similarly, literacy requires surface-level knowledge of a specific script (e.g. letters and their sound values), and knowledge of the principle underlying that script (e.g. that alphabets represent phonology and morphology), which governs other scripts of the same type. I propose that transfer across languages occurs at the level of grammatical awareness but not at the level of vocabulary. The hypothesis was tested in English- speaking children (6-11 years) learning Hebrew as a second language. In Study 1, Hebrew learners were given oral measures of vocabulary and grammatical awareness, and measures of morphological spelling knowledge. Grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge were significantly correlated across languages, but vocabulary was not. In Study 2, awareness of conceptually similar aspects of English and Hebrew morphology was measured in oral language and spelling. These were significantly correlated across languages. In both studies, Hebrew learners with high levels of Hebrew scored significantly higher than English-speaking monolinguals on grammatical and spelling measures. I conclude that grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge are transferable across languages and scripts, and that learning a second language can benefit specific aspects of metalinguistic and spelling development. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It has been a privilege and a pleasure to be supervised by Professor Terezinha Nunes. Meetings with her have always been challenging, stimulating, and very enjoyable, and her comments incisive and constructive. She has been unfailingly positive and encouraging, and I am grateful for her interest, her confidence in me, and her wisdom and friendship. I would like to thank all the children who took part in the study, for their hard work and enthusiasm, and for making me think and laugh. I will remember them all for a long time. I would also like to thank the many teachers who welcomed me into their schools and allowed me to take children out of their lessons. There isn't room to mention them all by name, but I would particularly like to thank Mrs Judy Lever Chain, Dr John Lazarus, Mr Jonathan Benjamin, Mrs Helena Cohen, Mr David Collins, Mr Alain Attar, Mrs Nathalie Attar, Mrs Susan Braham, and Mrs Chana Pinner. At the Institute of Education, I would like to thank Mr Geoff Woodhouse for his advice and helpful comments on the statistical analysis, Professor Kathy Sylva and Dr Richard Cowan for their advice and encouragement, and Ms Anna Brett for her patience and kindness. I am also grateful to Professor Peter Bryant at the University of Oxford, who made invaluable comments and sent files and helpful notes whizzing through e-mail at short notice. His enthusiasm for research is infectious. In Israel, I would like to thank Ruti Ardon, Professor Asher Rivlin and Dr Eva Teubal, for their advice and practical help. Without the support of fellow students and friends, doing a PhD would have been a lonely process. Lily, Ursula, Constanza, Celina and I have worried together and discussed our studies over hundreds of cups of tea, and provided each other with welcome distractions. I'm glad I had you all to share it with. Thanks also to Sarah Lunn and to my other friends who have reminded me that I still have a social life. And thanks to Eldad Druks, for his excellent dinosaur drawings. I am enormously grateful to my wonderful parents, Lynn and Geoffrey Bindman. As always, they have been endlessly supportive and great company. Their financial help in the final year allowed me to work on my study full-time. And finally, love and thanks to Dave Cohen, whose emotional and practical support have sustained and nourished me throughout. If I were to thank him adequately on paper I would have to write at least another chapter, so I'll settle for thanking him in person. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 12 LIST OF TABLES 14 LIST OF APPENDICES 15 INTRODUCTION 16 CHAPTER ONE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN METALINGUISTIC AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT 22 1.1. Introduction 22 1.2.Phonological awareness and literacy development 22 1.3.Grammatical awareness and literacy development 24 1.3.1. Syntactic awareness 24 1.3.2. Morphological and morpho-syntactic awareness 27 1.4. Conclusions 46 CHAPTER TWO TRANSFER OF LINGUISTIC AND LITERACY KNOWLEDGE ACROSS LANGUAGES 48 2.1. Introduction 48 2.2. Transfer of surface-level linguistic knowledge 49 2.2.1. Conclusions 51 2.3. Transfer of metalinguistic-level knowledge 51 2.3.1. Phonological awareness 52 2.3.1.1. Conclusions 55 2.3.2. Grammatical awareness 55 2.3.2.1. Conclusions 64 5 2.3.3. Transfer of literacy knowledge between languages and orthographies 65 2.3.4. Conclusions 70 2.4. Does transfer of metalinguistic knowledge between languages depend on the level of L2 proficiency attained? 73 2.5. Does transfer of metalinguistic knowledge depend on the purpose for which the second language is learned, and the way in which it is learned? 76 2.6. The present study - Study 1 79 2.6.1. Aims of Study 1 79 2.6.2. Research questions of Study 1 81 CHAPTER THREE THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 83 3.1. Ancient Hebrew 83 3.2. Modern Hebrew 85 3.3. Other Jewish languages - a note 86 3.4. The use of Hebrew in British Jewish life 87 3.5.Hebrew in Jewish primary schools 88 3.6.The Hebrew script 89 3.7. Hebrew word-formation 90 CHAPTER FOUR METHOD OF STUDY 1 94 4.1. Design 94 4.2. Subjects 95 4.2.1. Matching Hebrew learners with monolingual children 96 6 4.3. The schools 97 4 3 1 General description of the Jewish day schools 97 4.3.2. School 1 99 4.3.3. School 2 100 4.3.4. The monolingual schools 101 4.4.Procedure 102 4.4.1. General testing procedure 103 4.4.2. Testing of the Hebrew learners 103 4.4.3. Testing of the monolingual children 105 4.5.Measures 105 4.5.1. English measures 105 4.5.1.1. WISC-III Vocabulary 105 4.5.1.2. English Oral Cloze task 106 4.5.1.3. Row Completion task 107 4.5.1.4. Word Analogy task 108 4.5.1.5. Sentence Analogy task 109 4.5.1.6. Spelling tasks 111 4.5.2. Hebrew measures 113 4.5.2.1. Test of Hebrew Receptive Vocabulary 113 4.5.2.2. Hebrew Oral Cloze task 116 4.5.2.3. Hebrew Roots task 118 CHAPTER FIVE RESULTS OF STUDY 1 122 5.1. Description of the sample and measures 122 5.1.1. The sample of Hebrew learners 122 5.1.2. English measures 123 5.1.2.1. English Oral Cloze task 123 5.1.2.2. Word Analogy task 123 7 5.1.2.3. Sentence Analogy task 123 5.1.2.4. Row Completion task 124 5.1.2.5. Spelling tasks 124 5.1.2.5.1. Use of 'ed' on regular past tense verbs 124 5.1.2.5.2.Consistency in spelling root morphemes 126 5.1.3. Hebrew measures 126 5.1.3.1. Hebrew Vocabulary 126 5.1.3.2. Hebrew Oral Cloze task 127 5.1.3.3. Hebrew Roots task 127 5.2. The research questions 129 5.2.1. Can children transfer metalinguistic knowledge, as opposed to surface level knowledge, between their languages? 129 5.2.2. Does the ability of L2 learners to transfer metalinguistic knowledge between their languages depend on the kind of L2 learning they experience? 133 5.2.3. Can children use morpho-syntactic knowledge in one language for morphological spelling in another language? 135 5.2.4. (i) Can the ability of L2 learners to transfer metalinguistic knowledge between languages aid metalinguistic development? (ii) Does this depend on the level of L2 attained? 139 5.2.5. Can learning an L2 hasten the development of Ll morphological spelling ? 152 8 CHAPTER SIX DISCUSSION OF STUDY 1 161 6.1. Summary of results 161 6.2. Discussion of results 162 6.3. Conclusions and limitations 172 6.4. Aims of Study 2 174 6.5. Research questions of Study 2 176 CHAPTER SEVEN METHOD OF STUDY 2 179 7.1.Design 179 7.2. Subjects 179 7.2.1. Matching Hebrew learners with monolingual children 181 7.3.Procedure 181 7.3.1. General testing procedure 182 7.3.2. Testing of the Hebrew learners 183 7.3.3. Testing of the monolingual children 184 7.4.Measures 185 7.4.1. English measures 185 7.4.1.1. WISC-III Vocabulary subtest 185 7.4.1.2. Word Analogy task 185 7.4.1.3. Consistency in spelling English morphemes 185 7.4.1.4.
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