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Cross-linguistic transfer in literacy development and

implications for language learners

Article  in  Annals of Dyslexia · January 2002

DOI: 10.1007/s11881-002-0012-y

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Cross-linguistic Transfer in Literacy Development and Implications for

Language Learners

Aydin Yücesan Durgunoğlu University of Minnesota Duluth

Duluth, Minnesota

One of the challenges for educators working in multilingual settings has been to identify the causes of reading difficulties of language learn- ers (LLs). It is difficult to distinguish between reading problems stem- ming from low levels of linguistic proficiency versus more general reading/learning difficulties. There is now growing research evidence of cross-language transfer in different literacy processes. Literacy components that reflect language-independent, metacognitive/ metalinguistic processes show similarities across the two languages of students. Some examples are phonological awareness, syntactic aware- ness, knowledge of genres and meaning-making strategies. A possible way to use cross-language transfer as a diagnostic tool is proposed. If children have had enough exposure to and possibly instruction in their first language (L1), we can assess their skills and insights in L1. For LLs who have these skills and insights in their strong L1, we can ex- pect transfer to their second language (L2). If they do not have these skills and insights in their L2 yet, it indicates a delay due to limited language proficiency, and not because of a disability. This way LLs who just need more L2 practice and exposure can be distinguished from those LLs who truly have special needs.

In communities around the world, there are many students who have home languages that are different from the school language. These students are learning the majority language while at the Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 52, 2002 Copyright ©2002 by The International Dyslexia Association® ISSN 0736-9387

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same time developing literacy in that language. In this paper, I will be using the term “Language Learners (LLs)” rather than “bilinguals” to refer to these students because of several reasons: First, I want to highlight the fact that the school language is an ad- ditional language that these students are learning. Second, al- though these students are bilingual in the sense they are exposed to two (or more) languages at home and school, they may or may not be truly bilingual in terms of linguistic proficiency in either or both of these languages.

One of the dilemmas for educators working in such multilin- gual settings has been the following: If LLs have difficulties in reading, how can we distinguish between reading problems stem- ming from low levels of linguistic proficiency versus more general reading/learning difficulties (Geva, 2000)? In the last decade, sev- eral studies have shown that LLs were overrepresented in special education populations, implying that their language difficulties may have been misinterpreted as a more general learning prob- lem (Cummins, 1984; Ogbu, 1978; Yates, Ortiz, & Anderson, 1998). The pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, with ed- ucators being reluctant to identify LLs with special needs, and waiting to diagnose them after a certain level of linguistic profi- ciency is reached (Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001; Limbos & Geva, 2001). This underestimation, of course, can lead to the loss of valu- able intervention time. Given this uncertainty in the field, addi- tional studies are needed to develop procedures that can distinguish LLs from LLs with disabilities when the students are experiencing reading difficulties.

My goal in this paper is to summarize the literature on cross- language transfer effects in literacy, and based on these data, sug- gest a possible way to distinguish between LLs who are struggling because of low linguistic proficiency from those LLs who are struggling because of cognitive/learning problems. Recently, there have been attempts to develop reliable tests as well as local norms for LLs with special needs. For example, Everatt, Smythe, Adams, and Ocampo (2000) have compared seven- to eight-year-old English monolinguals to Sylheti-English LLs and identified subgroups within each population with spe- cific literacy difficulties (SpLD) as indicated by their poor spelling and reading skills. These subgroups of children were further as- sessed with tasks tapping phonological skills, naming speed, ma- nipulation of familiar sequences (such as numbers, months of the year), short-term memory, and visual and motor skills and com- pared to a matched control group. As expected, phonological measures differentiated between control groups and SpLD chil-

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dren in both monolingual and bilingual samples. However, the re- sults were complicated by the fact that when the monolingual samples were from a certain region of London, the control groups performed quite poorly as well, reducing the differences between control and SpLD groups, indicating the importance of sociocul- tural variables such as home and school practices. In addition, tests may only reflect a student’s current level of performance, rather than the potential to respond to learning experiences (Gutierrez-Clellen & Peña, 2001).

To overcome this latter problem, another approach is to use dynamic assessment that involves first assessing the students’ ex- isting levels of performance on a specific task and then providing them with specific learning experiences to improve that perfor- mance. How this experience later modifies their performance, and how much it is transferred and generalized to new contexts are evaluated (Campione & Brown, 1987). When it comes to liter- acy development of LLs, an untapped potential and a major source of transfer is literacy proficiencies in the strong language of a student. In the last decade, research exploring crosslanguage transfer has identified many processes that can occur in both lan- guages of a LL, reflecting the language-independent, metalin- guistic nature of these processes. In fact, parallel studies with English-speaking children learning a foreign language at school has shown that certain metalinguistic, analytic skills in English are the best predictors of foreign language learning. For example, Sparks, Ganschow, and Patton (1995) have identified three pre- dictors of success in foreign language learning: (1) a phonology- orthography component reflecting the understanding of English spelling-sound correspondences; (2) a meaning component re- flecting English vocabulary and reading comprehension knowl- edge; and (3) foreign language metalinguistic aptitude component reflecting the metalinguistic understanding of an in- vented language’s symbols, as operationalized by two subtasks of the Modern Language Aptitude Test.

In this review paper, I want to suggest using crosslanguage transfer as a diagnostic tool in the spirit of the dynamic assess- ment approaches. The logic is as follows: It can be assumed that LLs already have some learning experiences in their strong lan- guage through their interactions within their community, whether it is at home or at school. If LLs can accomplish certain literacy tasks well in their (strong) first language (L1), and if these proficiencies have been known to transfer across lan- guages, then we can assume that their difficulty in the second language (L2) is probably due to low linguistic proficiency,

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rather than general learning/cognition impairments. In addi- tion, their proficiencies in their L1 can be used as a facilitator or springboard to develop their proficiencies in their L2.

As Bialystok and Hakuta (1994) stated when discussing the representation of two languages in the LL mind “It is possible that the representation that bilingual speakers construct for their two languages may include two components-a common representation that is the record of general linguistic knowl- edge, and separate representations that record language-specific information” (p. 119). A parallel structure can be envisioned for biliteracy development. There are certain literacy concepts and strategies that can be universal and operate across languages. These insights and skills need to be acquired only once and apply in all languages of LLs. However, there are also language- specific concepts and knowledge; for example, orthographic patterns that are specific to a language.

Tasks that reflect language-independent, metacognitive/ metalinguistic processes of literacy are good candidates for transfer across languages. Hence, if LLs have these skills and in- sights in their strong L1, we can expect these readers to also transfer them to their L2. If they do not have these skills and in- sights in their L2 yet, it indicates a delay due to limited lan- guage proficiency, and not because of a disability. Therefore, it can be informative to assess—in the strong language of the LLs—certain proficiencies that have been known to transfer across languages. If the proficiency is present in the strong lan- guage of the student, we can expect those proficiencies to ap- pear in the weaker language as the student becomes more proficient in that language. However, for this purpose, we need to define possible areas of transfer more specifically. Next, I will describe research that has focused on transfer within specific processes of literacy.

DOMAINS OF CROSS-LINGUISTIC TRANSFER

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Before children can understand how the writing system of their community represents their spoken language, they need to be aware of the relevant units in the spoken language. This insight includes children’s awareness of phonological units such as words, syllables, onset-rimes, and phonemes. Evidence from a variety of research suggests that phonological awareness is highly correlated with word recognition and spelling (for a re- view, see Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990). There are

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also noncorrelational data indicating that specific instruction in developing phonological awareness is effective in word recog- nition and spelling, especially when the training phase includes alphabet knowledge as well (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1995; Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001).

Through exposure to spoken language and as their oral vo- cabulary develops, children begin to distinguish between words that differ by a few phonemes, but refer to completely different concepts such as hat and hot (Metsala & Walley, 1998). In lan- guages with complex morphologies, this differentiation develops even faster. For example, in Turkish, the difference in meaning be- tween gelmedi (did not come) versus gelemedi (could not come) is expressed by the addition of a single phoneme to the second word, hence children learn to attend to these small segments of speech (Durgunoğlu & Oney, 1999). Children need to distinguish between similar words in their spoken language. If a word has many neighbors—that is, a large set of similar words that differ from it by a few phonemes (e.g., “hot” has neighbors such as “not, hat, hop”)—then it pressures the children to restructure their phonological representations and to attend to the finer distinc- tions among the words (Goswami, 2000). Interestingly, although words with many neighbors are manipulated better in phonologi- cal awareness tasks (Durgunoğlu & Oney, 1999; Goswami, 2000), such words face competition from their neighbors, and hence are recognized with more difficulty under incomplete or degraded presentation conditions (Garlock, Walley, & Metsala, 2001).

Depending on the characteristics of a language, children may start by attending to different phonological units. For example, whereas for English speakers, the onset-rime units are salient, for Japanese speakers, moraic units—mora of the vowel attached to the initial consonant phoneme—are salient (Goswami, 2000). Czech-speaking children show higher levels of awareness of complex onsets than English or Canadian children (Caravolas & Bruck, 1993). In addition, as children go to school and begin to see how the written symbols represent the phonemes, their awareness of the individual phonemes develops rapidly. Children with dyslexia seem to be less successful or slower in re- structuring their phonological representations, especially if their language does not have a transparent orthography that makes the links between phonemes and graphemes explicit (Goswami, 2000; Metsala, 1997; Wimmer, Mayringer, & Landerl, 2000).

Across many different monolingual populations (e.g., Czech, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish), high levels of

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phonological awareness have been shown to accompany high levels of word recognition and spelling (Caravolas & Bruck, 1993; Cossu, Shankweiler, Liberman, Katz, & Tola, 1988; Durgunoğlu, 1998; Durgunoğlu & Oney, 1999; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Wimmer et al., 2000). This link has also been shown in non- alphabetic languages such as Chinese (Hu & Catts, 1998; for a re- view see Geva & Wang, 2001). Moreover, lower phonological processing skills have been shown to accompany dyslexia in many different monolingual populations, although the effect is smaller in orthographies that have more systematic grapheme- phoneme correspondences (Wimmer et al., 2000).

For LLs, these results imply that lower levels of linguistic pro- ficiency, especially in vocabulary knowledge, may slow the development of phonological awareness in their L2. However, if they have phonological awareness in their strong language, it is likely to facilitate its development in the L2. Many studies have shown that phonological awareness levels are correlated across languages as well as correlated with word recognition across lan- guages (e.g., Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau, Cormier, Grand- maison, & Lacroix, 1999; Durgunoğlu, 1998; Durgunoğlu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001). Recently, Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, and Schuster (2000) investigated the English literacy development of a group of children from many different linguistic backgrounds who were learning English in Canadian schools. Even when the students’ English language proficiency was still developing, English phonological awareness was related to basic reading and spelling skills in English. All of these studies imply that children with normally developing liter- acy skills show some phonological awareness in their strong lan- guage that can transfer to their L2, and that their phonological awareness in L2 can also be assessed even when their L2 oral vo- cabulary is not very well developed.

SYNTACTIC AWARENESS

This metalinguistic insight refers to the child’s ability to notice the internal grammatical structure of sentences. Even though unable to articulate a relevant rule, a child may still be aware of the systematicities in a language. Recent studies have shown that statistical regularities in speech are noticed even by infants as young as several months old (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996). In another study, when children (ages six to nine) and adults were exposed to an artificial language, they learned its rules even under incidental learning conditions when they were not particularly paying attention to the language as it played in

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the background (Saffran, 2001). Hence, as humans, we seem to be programmed to notice statistical regularities that make up the language.

Syntactic awareness affects literacy development through its influence on decoding and listening comprehension (Tunmer, 1990; Tunmer & Chapman, 2001). It can enable readers to moni- tor ongoing comprehension and notice when a word does not fit the ongoing representation of the text. For example, if a reader misreads the verb stares as stars in the sentence The cat stares at the mouse, syntactic awareness enables the child to real- ize that it should have been an action word and not the name of an object.

Syntactic awareness can also influence reading by enabling the reader to use the sentence context, and enhancing or verify- ing the incomplete visual and phonological information that an inexperienced reader has extracted when reading an unfamiliar word in a text. However, using the sentence context to recog- nize a word is not an effective substitute to recognizing a word by analyzing it fully. Currently, there is some controversy about how much syntactic awareness contributes to the decoding pro- cess, especially after phonological awareness is taken into con- sideration (Bowey & Patel, 1988; Blackmore & Pratt, 1997). However, the role of syntactic awareness in understanding the spoken language is still important. Also, syntactic awareness as measured by morphological knowledge predicts spelling per- formance in monolingual children (Muter & Snowling, 1997).

To assess how syntactic awareness is related across the two languages of LLs, Verhoeven (1994) tested Turkish-speaking children in Dutch schools by giving them sentence repetition tasks in both Turkish and Dutch. The sentences in both lan- guages had rich grammatical variations and word orders. The accuracy of morphemes and word order in the repeated sen- tence was analyzed. In the beginning of Grade 1, there was a correlation between the tasks in the two languages, but this in- terdependence became weaker during the next two years of testing. However, since this task required short-term memory capacity, it may have reflected memory span differences more than syntactic awareness.

We tested the syntactic awareness of fourth grade Spanish- English students by asking them to identify and correct syntactic errors in sentences based on the Johnson and Newport (1989) task (Durgunoğlu, Mir, & Ariño-Martí, 2002). In this task, partici- pants were given a sentence with a specific error and asked to correct the sentence. Although the English and Spanish

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sentences were not translations of each other, they both required students to correct similar types of errors such as tense, inflection, and word order. To reduce the memory load as we read the sen- tences, we also presented them on index cards. English and Spanish syntactic measures were correlated (.44), implying that a common metalinguistic awareness was used in both tasks. Children who could analyze and correct the syntactic structure of a sentence accurately in one language were more likely to show this analytic accuracy in the other language as well.

FUNCTIONAL AWARENESS

This metalinguistic insight includes children’s developing no- tions about the functions and conventions of written language. Through interactions with written language, children develop “concepts about print” (Clay, 1979). This awareness also includes an understanding of when and why print is used. Of course, lit- eracy practices at home and in immediate surroundings provide a model for the child to emulate. Research has shown that func- tional awareness plays a role in literacy development because it is related to letter discrimination ability and phonological aware- ness (Lomax & McGee, 1987).

Verhoeven & Aarts (1998) analyzed whether understanding the functions of print was interrelated in the two languages of Turkish-speaking children in Dutch schools. They assessed sixth graders’ understanding of the features of both Turkish and Dutch authentic objects with print (e.g., a letter, an electricity bill, an application form) by asking children detailed questions such as where one signs a form. The measures were signifi- cantly correlated across the two languages of the students, indi- cating that once students notice the functions and conventions of print in one language, they tend to apply this knowledge in another language as well.

DECODING

In word recognition and spelling performance, instances of neg- ative transfer occur quite often (see for example, Geva & Wang, 2001), and that is one of the reasons why educators worry about the students confusing their two languages. The writing sam- ples we have collected from upper elementary Spanish-English LLs yielded many instances of such errors (Durgunoğlu, et al., 2002). In this study, a very common strategy in English spellings was to use the spelling-sound correspondences sys- tematically and spell the words as they were heard, hence trans- ferring a strategy that is quite effective for the more transparent

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Spanish orthography. As one student said, it is easier to read and write in Spanish because “When you read or write some thing [sic], you just sound it out. When you do it [in] English, you have to remember.” To give examples, the words read, need, witch, wardrobe, favorite, that, and adventures were spelled as rid, nid, wich, worldrol, favret, thet, and adengers. Because the students tended to spell the words as they heard them, they omitted the silent letters in both English and Spanish words, errors such as ago for hago, asemos for hacemos, aser for hacer, stor for store, and hom for home were quite common. The students also used com- mon English consonant clusters when spelling Spanish words: scuela for escuela, stoy for estoy, spero for espero, studios for estu- dios, and different for diferent. They also interchanged sounds be- tween English and Spanish, for example i and y. In both Spanish and English spellings, the phoneme /i/, which is some- times spelled as y, was interchanged with i or e. For example, “happily” was spelled as hapali, “lady” as late. Also, Sanish words “mi” (me) and “y” (and) were spelled as my and i, respectively.

However, at a global level, in the aforementioned study as well as in others, there are positive correlations among word recognition and spelling scores both within- and across- languages (Durgunoğlu, 1998; Durgunoğlu, Peynircioglu, & Mir, in press; see Leong & Joshi, 1997, for an overview of studies). Even with two languages with different complexities of grapheme- phoneme correspondences—such as the more transparent, vow- eled form of Hebrew and opaque English—accuracy and speed of reading words in isolation are similar (Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1997). Further supporting the transfer hypothesis are stud- ies showing that word recognition and spelling follow very simi- lar developmental paths for ESL (English as a second language) and EFL (English as first language) students (Geva, 2000). For ex- ample, cognitive and linguistic profiles of average and at-risk readers were similar for both ESL students who had a variety of Asian languages as their home language and EFL students (Geva et al., 2000). For both groups, phonological awareness and rapid naming were predictors of word recognition, even after nonver- bal intelligence and receptive vocabulary were entered into the equation. Likewise, for Portuguese-English LLs, phonological processing was the source of weakness for poorer readers across languages (DaFontoura & Siegel, 1995).

What are some underlying metalinguistic sources of common- ality in decoding across languages? Word recognition and spelling require sensitivity to the statistical patterns in language. For example, Pacton, Perruchet, Fayol, and Cleeremans (2001) studied

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the acceptability judgments of monolingual French children to different nonwords. Children understood that vowels could not be doubled and showed an awareness of the frequency and loca- tion of double consonants (see also Cassar & Treiman, 1997 for similar results with English monolinguals). Children who show an awareness of the recurring statistical patterns in their home language may be more sensitive to accumulating that information in their second language as well. However, if the home language does not require such alphabetic systematicities, then crosslan- guage transfer cannot be expected. Indeed, as Gottardo et al. (2001) reported in a study comparing word recognition perfor- mance of Cantonese-English speaking students, the word recogni- tion measures were not correlated across the two languages.

USE OF FORMAL DEFINITIONS, DECONTEXTUALIZED LANGUAGE

One of the difficulties for children is to understand the decon- textualized language of the schools. In schools, reading and writing usually focus on objects, people, and events that are not present here and now. Children need to communicate with indi- viduals (e.g., the book’s author) with whom they may not have a personal link. In addition, print is decontextualized language as it does not have the rich nonlinguistic information such as gestures and immediate feedback that is part of oral communi- cation. Therefore, reading comprehension requires more than an understanding of the informal, contextualized, communicative aspects of speech. Decontextualized school language has differ- ent rules and requirements. One example of such specialized language is how concepts are defined formally. Formal defini- tions require a “culturally prescribed” structure (Snow, Cancini, Gonzalez, & Shriberg, 1989, p. 234) such as “X is a Y that is . . .” with a nonpersonal voice. For example, for the word “ocean,” the definition “it is a large body of water that surrounds the land” is more acceptable than the definition, “in the summers when it gets hot, I go to the ocean.”

Gutierrez-Clellen and DeCurtis (1999) noted a marked differ- ence in the quality of formal definitions produced by Spanish- speaking children with or without language impairments. Children without language impairment provided formal defini- tions 50% of the time whereas this number was only 19% for chil- dren with language impairment. Children without language impairment used superordinate categories (e.g., animal) rather than the generic term (e.g., “una cosa” = a thing). They also pro- vided more specific details about the object. If the quality of for-

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mal definitions is considered a metalinguistic skill, then it can be expected to correlate across the two languages of a LL.

We compared the formal definition quality of 26 Spanish- English LL fourth graders, and related their performance to read- ing comprehension (Durgunoğlu, et al., in press). Indeed, the quality of formal definitions was correlated across the languages of Spanish-English fourth graders. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the quality of formal definitions in each language was most strongly predicted by the quality of the formal defini- tions in the other language, even when word recognition and gen- eral vocabulary levels in the same language were also entered into the equation. Also, the quality of formal definitions was corre- lated with reading comprehension across languages.

KNOWLEDGE OF WRITING CONVENTIONS, STORY GRAMMAR

Another possible metalinguistic strategy that can transfer across languages is the knowledge of writing conventions. Skilled writers know how information is organized in different genres, e.g., in stories versus newspaper articles. In a study with fourth grade Spanish-English speakers, we asked them to write two stories describing the events in a photograph (Durgunoğlu, et al., 2002). For the English story, we used the black and white photograph depicting an older woman with some tomatoes in her hand and a puzzled expression on her face (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990). For the Spanish story, we used a color photo- graph showing a young boy with a green face looking at a mir- ror, and his family members staring at him with various expressions of surprise and horror on their faces. We evaluated the quality of the writing on a scale of 1 to 4 in terms of the rich- ness of content based on the frameworks of Bruce (1983) and Myers (1980). There was a significant correlation between the content rating of the English and Spanish stories. Supporting this result, qualitative analyses of the stories showed that chil- dren who had a rich, coherent storyline with character develop- ment, a conflict, suspense, and resolution were likely to show these proficiencies in their writing in both languages. They in- cluded details about characters such as their names and mo- tives, and snippets of conversation in both samples.

GOOD MEANING-MAKING STRATEGIES IN READING COMPREHENSION

Research with monolingual readers have indicated the impor- tance of a reader interacting with the text actively and creating a

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rich mental representation of the text (see Block & Pressley, 2002, for a recent overview). Good readers use a multitude of strategies (labeled as “good meaning-making strategies” by Langer, Bartolome, Vasquez, & Lucas, 1990) such as monitoring their com- prehension, identifying and repairing comprehension problems, clarifying the meaning of words, focusing on constructing a sensi- ble overall representation, forming hypotheses, using genre char- acteristics, inferencing; questioning the author, and relating the new information to existing background knowledge. Because these strategies are metacognitive, we can expect them to transfer across languages.

Several studies have analyzed the reading comprehension processes of upper elementary students while they read texts in both Spanish and English. In these studies, students produced think-aloud protocols while reading. They also answered ques- tions tapping their understanding of the reading process and their use of comprehension strategies (Jiménez, 2000; Jiménez, García, & Pearson, 1995, 1996; Langer et al., 1990). Several themes emerged across these studies. First, replicating the pat- tern with monolingual readers, there were significant differ- ences between good and poor readers when their meaning construction during reading was analyzed. Poor readers were more interested in plowing through the text and finishing the reading of the words. In contrast, good readers showed fre- quent self-reflection and monitoring of their comprehension. Even when they noticed an inconsistency or a missing concept in their representation of the text, poor readers did not try to re- pair and resolve the problem. In contrast, good readers per- sisted and used multiple strategies to resolve the conflict. Good readers also made many more inferences about the text, and produced and tested hypotheses on what an unknown word may mean. More interestingly, good readers used these rich strategies to facilitate their comprehension of both Spanish and English texts. As Langer et al. (1990) summarized: “The use of good meaning-making strategies rather than the degree of flu- ency in English differentiated the better from poorer readers . . . the students who had developed good meaning-making strate- gies in one language used those strategies in their second lan- guage . . .” (p. 463). In fact, the students themselves articulated how they used both languages to help them with their reading, especially when they encountered an unfamiliar word. They re- ported that they tried to translate sentences or think of similar sounding words (cognates) in the other language (Jiménez et al., 1995). Students also reported that they used strategies such

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as questioning, rereading, evaluating, and monitoring compre- hension in both of their languages (Jiménez et al, 1996).

SUMMARY

One of the challenges for educators of LL students is to distin- guish between literacy problems stemming from low linguistic proficiency versus general cognitive/learning problems. In this article, I have described instances of crosslanguage transfer ob- served in certain components of literacy and suggested using transfer as a diagnostic tool. If LLs have certain strengths in their L1, and those strengths are known to transfer across languages, then we can expect that the LLs will develop those proficiencies in their L2 as their L2 proficiency develops. For example, young children who have some level of phonological awareness in their L1 are more likely to show that awareness in their developing L2 as well. In this instance, as their vocabulary and familiarity with the sounds of their new language increases, we can expect them to show phonological awareness in their L2 as well, even though they may be experiencing some delays at the moment. For these children, tailoring the L2 instruction to build on their existing L1 strengths also may be helpful.

In contrast, children with low levels of certain metacognitive/ metalinguistic awareness in their home language need to be ob- served further. One possibility is that they may not have a strong enough grasp of their L1, possibly because of low home or school support. In that case, instructing in L2, and periodi- cally assessing their language and literacy development is needed. However, if children have had reasonable exposure and instruc- tion in their L1 and still had not developed certain metacognitive/ metalinguistic skills, then we can suspect cognitive/develop- mental deficits that are likely to affect both L1 and L2 literacy development.

Address correspondence to: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1207 Ordean Court, Duluth, MN 55812. Phone: (218) 726–6885. e-mail: [email protected]

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