Purpose: This study investigates young Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners' Chinese character reading performance and its relationship with their orthographic awareness. There is a pressing need to gain a better understanding of Hong Kong's ethnic minority students' CSL acquisition, so that more effective instruction can be provided.…

This study investigates the English spelling of students in grades 2 through 8 in Mainland China. A review of spelling and cross-linguistic research in spelling is presented. The orthographic development of 273 students was assessed "with validated spelling inventories" (Sterbinsky, 2007) to sample developmental features across three…

Language acquisition is used for the process where a language is acquired as a result of natural and largely random exposure to language, whereas the term language learning refers to the exposure structured through language teaching. Children acquire language from 18 months to puberty. The child's grammar is semantically based. Children reflect…

There is growing evidence of systematic underachievement of South African primary school learners in reading in English as the first additional language. There is a small but growing literature that provides insights, that is, causes, patterns and prevalence, into this phenomenon. Through a secondary analysis of a spelling component of a literacy…

This study reports evidence of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) that surfaced from English compositions of SiSwati learners of English in Swaziland, where English is a second language. Although CLI has been studied widely in other languages, it has not been studied in SiSwati and English, and its implications for instruction are not known.…