The Effectiveness of an English Intervention Program for Mandarin-English Bilingual University Students

  • Chunyang Liang

    Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

    Abstract

    Previous studies demonstrated intervention programs focused on basic cognitive-linguistic skills (e.g., phonological and orthographic skills) could significantly improve English reading and spelling abilities of individuals in preschool to young adulthood across various alphabetic languages. Little attention has been paid to whether similar results will be observed in reading and spelling abilities of skilled readers. The current study aims to identify differences and similarities in reading and spelling processes in bilingual Mandarin- and English-speaking and monolingual English-speaking participants. The
    monolingual participants are expected to rely on phonological skills when reading and spelling. The bilingual participants are expected to rely more on whole word recognition skills when reading and spelling in English due to the characteristics of the Chinese writing system. Surprisingly, we found that English phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge contributed to accurate English reading and spelling. However, for English monolinguals, as they are skilled readers, phonological awareness can only predict their pseudoword-related tasks.
    In study 2, Little attention has been devoted to examining the effects of English
    intervention programs on the English spelling abilities of Mandarin-English young adults. We investigated whether these interventions are also efficacious for Mandarin-English speakers, which could potentially contribute to the development of more effective instructional strategies for substantial numbers of EAL learners in the UK. We conducted two interventions over 6 weeks. Participants were assessed on English reading, English spelling, phonological and orthographic abilities (in both English and Mandarin) before and after the intervention. Participants from both intervention programs made significant improvements in all measures except for Mandarin orthographic knowledge and visual memory measure after the intervention. The results showed that participants in the phonological intervention VII group made more gains in phonological awareness (for English and Mandarin) and pseudoword reading and spelling but not in real word reading and spelling tasks. For the orthographic intervention, participants were found to produce more gains in real word
    reading and spelling abilities. These findings could provide theoretical foundations for a more comprehensive model of second language acquisition, as well as educational implications for competent teaching and instruction in adults from different language backgrounds.
    Date of AwardMay 2022
    Original languageEnglish
    Awarding Institution
    • Coventry University
    SupervisorGeorgia Niolaki (Supervisor), Janet Vousden (Supervisor), Julia Carroll (Supervisor) & Laura Taylor (Supervisor)

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