[Applied Linguistics Review] Applied Linguistics Review Volume 2 ([Print + Online]) || The role of phonemic awareness in early L2 reading for adult English language learners: Pedagogical

The role of phonemic awareness in early L2reading for adult English language learners:

Pedagogical implications

MARGO DELLICARPINI

Abstract

This paper reports on part of a larger study investigating the role of phonemicawareness (PA) and decoding ability in second language (L2) reading develop-ment among adult English language learners who have not mastered readingin their native language. The data reported in this paper were part of a largerlongitudinal study that investigated a variety of factors related to initial read-ing development for adult L2 learners of English. A group of 26 participantsenrolled in adult ESL education classes in the United States were followed forone year and assessed on measures of phonemic/phonological awareness anddecoding ability.

The results of this study document the relationship between phonemic/phono-logical awareness and L2 beginning reading in English for adult learners andprovide evidence for similar relationships existing between phonemic/phono-logical awareness and early reading for adult learners and children learning toread in English.

While reading and literacy development are complicated, the findings of thisstudy suggest the importance of the decoding process for adult learners in thebeginning stages of ESL reading.

Key Words: Adult Education, English as a Second Language, Literacy De-velopment, Phonemic Awareness, Phonological Awareness, Reading Research,Second Language Reading.

1. Introduction

Growing numbers of adult learners whose native language is not English are inneed of reading instruction at the adult education level. The U.S. Departmentof Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education (2005) reported that

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242 Margo DelliCarpini

43.8% of the participants in federally funded adult education during the 2003–2004 school year were English language learners (ELLs). Of this number, 50%participated in either beginning literacy or beginning level ESL classes duringthat program year (U.S. Department of Education, 2006).1

According to the most recent statistics of the National Assessment of AdultLiteracy2 (NAAL, United States Department of Education, 2005) in the year2003 there were eleven million adults not literate3 in English4 in the UnitedStates. These individuals comprised two subgroups: seven million who wereunable to answer even basic questions on the assessment, and four million whowere unable to participate due to a language barrier, which meant that theyneither spoke nor understood Spanish or English, the two languages used inthe interviews. Of the former group, four million were Hispanic, and combinedwith the four million in the latter group, the results from the survey indicate thatbetween four and eight million adults in the ‘non-literate in English’ categoryare non-native speakers of English.5

These current data represent no change in the trend reported in the 1992National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) which illustrated that second language(L2) adults in general fared poorly compared to other groups in terms of theirability to successfully interpret tasks in the prose literacy, document literacy andquantitative literacy categories.6

Based on the aforementioned demographic data increased knowledge of theL2 reading process in general, and specifically, the early reading process for adultELLs who are beginning readers, will inform instruction and strengthen existingprograms for adult ELLs.While a number of studies have investigated L2 literacy(for a comprehensive review see Burt, Peyton &Adams 2005) the focus has beenprimarily on top down strategies such as schema, context clues and the transferof comprehension strategies from the first language (L1) (Eskey 1988; Hinkel2006). In an annotated bibliography on adult L2 reading research (Adams & Burt2002) between the years1980 and 2002, there were only five studies identifiedinvestigating beginning reading in adult ESL learners (Griffen 1990; Klassen &Burnaby 1993; Robson 1982; Strucker 1997). In order to effectively meet theeducational needs of pre-readers and beginning readers additional research ofthe beginning adult L2 reading process is necessary.

What is known is that beginning reading encompasses a variety of factors:a person’s background experiences, his or her language, culture, and the needto participate in certain types of literacy events. In addition, initial reading inan alphabetic system like English includes mastery of word level skills. Theinitial process of reading in monolingual children, and more recently, bilingualchildren, has been studied extensively (see Armbruster, Lehr & Osborn, 2003;Barone & Morrow,2003; Droop &Verhoeven 2003; Slavin & Cheung 2005). One


Phonemic awareness and beginning adult L2 reading 243

important factor of beginning reading in alphabetic systems that has emergedfrom this research has been the role that phonemic awareness plays in the earlyreading process. It is this component of reading, considered a word level skill,or a bottom up skill, that this study investigates for adult ESL learners.

2. Phonological and phonemic awareness: A review of the literature

Phonological awareness (PA) is an awareness of the sounds of speech and is con-sidered a metalinguistic ability. Phonemic awareness is the ability to perceive,identify and to manipulate the sounds in spoken language (National ReadingPanel 2000). Phonological and phonemic awareness deal with units of speech,and there is frequently a distinction made between phonemic awareness (thesmallest units, phonemes) and phonological awareness (dealing with larger unitssuch as onsets and rhymes) (Cunningham, Hoffman,& Yopp 1998). For the pur-poses of this research phonemic and phonological awareness will be conflatedand referred to as PA. Numerous studies have found PA to be a necessary elementin the beginning reading process in an alphabetic system, and PA has been foundto be a predictor of future reading ability in children at the Pre-K and elemen-tary level (Abouzeid 1992; Bentin 1992; Ehri, Wilce & Taylor 1988; Lundberg1989; Maclean, Bryant & Bradley 1988; Vellutino & Scanlon 1988). Researchhas provided evidence for the importance of the ability to phonologically de-code words as a skill necessary to developing word recognition (Vellutino &Scanlon 1991). Bentin (1992) claims that “the ability to decipher phonologyfrom writing is a prerequisite for reading and understanding written words atthe first encounter, and needs to be mastered before efficient reading can oc-cur” (p. 204). In addition, deficits in phonological processing have emerged asa leading cause of reading disabilities (Torgesen 1991). In fact, “perhaps themost important single conclusion about reading disabilities is that they are mostcommonly caused by weaknesses in the ability to process the phonological fea-tures of language”(Torgensen, Wagner, Rashotte, Rose, Lindamood, Conway &Garvan 1999: 579). Deficits in phonological processing ability can negativelyimpact a reader’s ability to develop fluent decoding ability, therefore negativelyaffecting efficient word recognition (Sabatini, Venezky, Kharik & Jain 2000).

Task complexity has also been the focus of research in order to better definePA as a construct, to determine what the measures tell us regarding learnerability, and as a diagnostic tool. Researchers have worked to define PA in terms of“. . . complexity of the units on which the operations are performed. . . cognitivedemands of the task. . . and complexity of the syllable structure of items that arepresented in each task . . . ” (Jimenez & Venegas 2004: 798).



Yopp (1988) investigated the types of PA skills that were most predictiveof decoding ability and that should be included in both research and practice.She found that each of the tests of phonemic ability that were assessed7 had ahigh level of predictive validity, and discussed breaking PA into Simple Phone-mic Awareness and Compound Phonemic Awareness. She identified tasks likeblending (where sounds are blended together to form words or nonsense words:[k-æ-t] → [cat]) to be an easier, or a Simple PA task, which requires one oper-ation, and tasks like deletion (say the word black . . . delete the [b] and say theword that remains [lack]) to be a more difficult or Compound PA task, whichrequires the performance of one operation, then holding that operation in short-term memory while performing another operation. Children inYopp’s study hadan easier time blending than deleting phonemes and identification tasks such asrhyme and phoneme isolation were the easiest tasks for children to perform.

English is not the only language that has been investigated in terms of theimportance of PA to the early reading process. Studies conducted with childrenwhose native languages include Spanish, Korean, Arabic and Latvian have fur-ther contributed to the large body of knowledge on the important role of PA andearly reading (Abu-Rabia, Share & Mansour 2003; Carrillo 1994; Kim & Davis2004; Sprugevica & Hoien 2003).

Researchers have hypothesized that PA is “(a) a prerequisite for learning toread, (b) influenced by reading instruction and practice, and (c) both a causeand a consequence of reading acquisition (i.e., reciprocal)” (Smith, Simmons,Kameenui 1995). When researchers first began to investigate the relationship be-tween PA and reading ability, they focused on the phoneme level since it was ar-gued that letters in alphabetic systems (usually) represent individual phonemes.In order to learn to read, children need to be aware of the individual phonemesand phonetic segments in spoken words before they would be able to learn aboutthe correspondence between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters) (Cas-tles & Coltheart 2004; Gough & Hillinger 1980). In addition, researchers haveargued that an awareness of units such as rhymes will facilitate the mappingof phonemes to letter sequences (Castles & Coltheart 2004; Goswami 1993;Goswami & Bryant 1990).

While the research into PA takes on a variety of formats and comes fromdifferent disciplines, the studies that inform the current research deal with thecorrelation between PA and beginning reading, PA in bilingual children learningto read in English, and the nature and role of PA in adult monolingual learnerswho are beginning readers.



2.1. Correlations between PA and decoding ability

Over the past three decades research documenting the causal relationship be-tween PA and reading has grown and strengthened. Recent reviews of the re-search have concluded that the data provide strong enough evidence to establishthis causal relationship between PA and early reading for monolingual learners(Adams 1990; Rack, Snowling, Olson 1992; Spector 1995). A large numberof correlational studies have consistently shown significant and predictive rela-tionships between PA and early reading success among monolingual children(Mann 1984; Vellutino & Scanlon 1987; Wagner, Torgesen, Laughon, Simmons& Rashotte 1993; Wagner, Torgensen, Rashotte, Hecht, Barker, Burgess, Don-ahue & Garon 1997), as well as correlations between PA and children’s subse-quent reading and spelling abilities (Adams 1990; Bradley & Bryant 1985; Mann1993; Share & Stanovich 1995). Moreover, evidence for the causal relationshipbetween PA and reading exists in the empirical studies that have investigated thepositive effect of explicit instruction in PA on children’s spelling and readingachievement (Ball & Blachman 1991; Castiglioni-Spalten & Ehri 2003; Ehri,Nunes, Willows, Schuster,Yaghoub-Zadeh, Shanahan 2001; McCutchen,Abbot,Green, Beretvas, Cox, Poller, Quiroga & Gray 2002). In essence, “An awarenessof phonemes is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle that underlies oursystem of written language” (Chard & Dickson 1999: 263).

2.2. PA in bilingual children learning English

Research conducted with bilingual children learning to read in English hasprovided evidence for correlations between PA in the L2 (English) and literacyin the L2 (Stuart-Smith & Martin 1997).In addition, evidence has emerged forthe cross-linguistic transfer of PA skills and has highlighted the positive waysthat L1 PA abilities can be applied to the L2 reading (Cisero & Royer 1995;Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison & Lacroix 1999; Dickinson, McCabe, Clark-Chiarelli & Wolf 2004; Durgunoglu, Nagy & Hancin-Bhatt 1993; Durgunoglu& Oney 1999; Gottardo 2002; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel & Wade-Woolley 2001;Walpole 2001). Moreover, L1 PA scores in kindergarten have been shown tobe predictive of L2 PA scores in first grade for children learning English as asecond language (Cisero & Royer 1995).

2.3. PA and adult monolingual beginning readers

Researchers have also investigated PA and its relationship to reading in adultlearners who are non-readers. Cross-linguistic research (English, Portuguese,



Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish) suggests that older learners who cannot readan alphabetic system have difficulty manipulating phonemes. Non-literate adultlearners perform very poorly on traditional PA tasks, like phoneme deletion orsubstitution (Lukatela, Carello, Shankweiler & Liberman 1995; Morias, Ber-telson, Cary & Alegria 1986). Moreover, recent work by Durgunoglu and Oney(2002) suggests that, at least in terms of PA, similar cognitive processes ex-ist between children and non-literate adults acquiring reading skills in Turkey(in their native language) and that adults who “received explicit letter, soundand syllable instruction showed more significant gains in word-recognition andspelling performance” (Durgunoglu & Oney 2002:261) than adults enrolled intraditional adult literacy programs in Turkey.

To summarize, there is strong evidence for the correlation between PA andearly reading in monolingual and bilingual children, the transfer of PA in theL1 to L2 reading, and the positive effect of explicit instruction of PA skills forboth children and adults who may have deficits in their PA abilities, either dueto lack of formal education or a reading disability. Research has also providedevidence for the similarity between early literacy acquisition between bilingualadults and children (DelliCarpini 2006). With the increase of adult ELLs whohave not yet learned to read in either their native language or in English astheir second language, it would be an obvious extension of the L1 research toinvestigate the relationship of PA and learning to read in a second language forthe first time for these older learners. To address this, in part, the present studysought to answer the following questions:

– Does PA in a second language in adult learners predict initial decoding abilityin that language (in the same way that it does for monolingual childrenlearning to read for the first time)?

– Are some types of PA (as tested by the various subtests) more predictive ofinitial decoding ability than others for adult L2 learners? If so, which typesof PA seem to be important to beginning reading for these learners?

3. The study

3.1. Participants

The study involved 26 adult ESL students (native speakers of Spanish) attendingadult education programs in a suburban county in New York State. Participantswere followed for a one year period and assessed on measures of PA and decodingability. Participants’ age ranged from 18–46 years old with an average age of22.7 years. 65% of the participants were male (17) and 35% were female (9).



Participants were randomly identified from course rosters and class place-ment in either Beginning ESL Literacy or Beginning ESL levels.8 Program place-ment was determined by trained intake counselors employed by the respectiveprograms. Once students were identified as possible participants, an interviewwas conducted and students with self-reported levels of prior education totalingless than 4 years were included in the study. In fact, the average overall level ofprior formal education was very low for these students and all reported beingunable to read in English and not reading well or at all in Spanish. Data were col-lected during four collection sessions over the school year (October, December,February and April).

3.2. Classroom context

Participants were enrolled in three related adult education.The first program wasa traditional adult education program that had a large ELL population acrossseveral sites in the county and data was collected at two of the sites. The secondprogram was an English Literacy Civics Program (EL/Civics) that focused onthe development of English literacy skills through the content area of civicseducation and citizenship preparation. The third program was an Even StartFamily Literacy Program that integrated adult education, parenting education,early childhood education, and interactive literacy activities between caregiversand their children.

3.3. Tasks

A battery of commercially produced tasks designed to investigate the level ofa subject’s PA and decoding ability in English were employed (see appendix Afor the instruments used). These tasks were administered for research purposesand were not part of the programs’ assessment systems. A variety of existingmeasures were used to ensure that the assessment tools were field tested and toaddress a full range of PA skills, options that are not always available when usingone instrument. For example, some of the English PA measures were assessedusing the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing Version II9/CTOPP(Wagner,Torgesen & Rashotte 1999) which has internal consistency that exceeds.80 and has very limited error potential. In addition, some measures were alsotaken from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (1998) which also hasreliabilities at the .80 level, so the reliability of assessment tools was ensured inthis way.

The assessment measures selected are commonly used in both educationalsettings and research settings to determine the level of PA, the effect of inter-



vention on PA ability, and the correlations between PA and decoding, as well asthe predictive nature of PA to later decoding ability. Based on the research inthe field, the selected tasks have been shown to be related to each other and toreading. By using commercially produced assessments, similar to those whichhave been used in numerous other PA research studies, the findings of this studyhave the ability, in part, replicate the studies that inform this research.

Each of the tasks was administered individually and each testing session tookapproximately 45 minutes per person. Tasks were administered and scored asper the published directions, and for the purposes of this study, both raw scoresand percent correct scores were established (see results section). All tasks weremodeled and 3–5 practice tokens were administered before the scored part of theassessment began to ensure that participants understood the directions (given inboth Spanish and English) and task. A brief description of the tasks follows:

– Segmentation: Two segmentation tasks from the CTOPP were administered.In the first, phoneme segmentation, the investigator said a word out loud andthen asked the subjects to push pennies towards the researcher to indicate thenumber of constituent phonemes they heard in each word. The instructions10

for this task specifically asked participants to push a penny forward for eachsound they hear. The second segmentation task, phoneme blending, requiressubjects to say a word that the researcher had stretched out. This requiredsubjects to recompose, or blend the constituent phonemes of a word. Forexample, the researcher would say [k-æ-t] and the correct response wouldbe [cat].

– Isolation: In the phoneme isolation task, taken from the Phonological Aware-ness Test /PAT (Robinson & Slater 1997) participants were asked to identifyeither beginning or ending phonemes of the word provided (referred to assounds by the investigator).

– Deletion: In the phoneme deletion task (CTOPP), participants had to say theword that remains after they delete a phoneme. For example, the investigatorgave the directions, “take away the first sound in the word and say what isleft”. If the stimulus is [black] and the instructed phoneme [b] is deleted, theremaining word is [lack].

– Substitution: The phoneme substitution task (PAT) required participants tosubstitute one phoneme for another and say the ‘new’ word. For example, ifthe original word was [black] and participants were instructed to take awaythe [b] and add [f]. The remaining word was [flack].



– Decoding tasks: Real and invented word decoding tasks were administered.These tasks were from the Basic Skills cluster of the Woodcock ReadingMastery tests (Woodcock –Johnson). The Word Identification Test involvesreal words and the Word Attack Test involves pseudo words.

3.4. Statistical Analysis

Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were conducted. Initially,means, standard deviations, ranges, (and percent correct and converted means/CM for PA tasks)11 were computed for all study variables including the PA mea-sures (i.e. phoneme segmentation, phoneme blending, phonological isolation,phonological substitution, and phonological deletion) and the reading acquisi-tion measures (i.e. real word decoding and invented word decoding) at all fourtime points. Correlations among the five measures of PA and among the twomeasures of reading acquisition were then computed at each time point.

The next step was to compute total scores for PA and for reading acquisition.This was done by converting each of the raw scores into z-scores (with means of0 and standard deviations of 1) and then summing the scores separately for eachtime point. That is, z-scores for the five measures of PA were summed to arriveat total scores at each time point for each language (hereafter referred to as thePA scores), and z-scores on the two measures of decoding ability were summedto arrive at total scores at each time point for each language. In this manner,each of the five PA tasks and both of the decoding tasks had equal influence onthe respective composite scores. Two-tailed tests and an alpha (α) level of .05were used for all hypothesis tests.

At each time point, two multiple regression analyses were performed withthe five PA tasks as the predictors and either (a) decoding invented word scoresor (b) decoding real word scores as the outcome variable, for a total of eightmultiple regression analyses.

To determine which PA tasks were most strongly related to the decodingtasks, both the statistical significance of each PA task and partial correlationswere examined.

4. Results

Table 1 illustrates (1) the general task performance at all data collection pointsand (2) the development of skills over time (means and standard deviations). Inaddition, the minimum score and maximum score on each task is provided. Alltwenty-six participants were included in each task. The number of task items,



which represents the maximum score possible, is as follows: PA segmentation,15; PA Blending, 15; PA Isolation, 15; PA Substitution, 15; PA Deletion, 10.

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for PA TasksMinimum and maximum performance on each task at each time point withmeans and standard deviations.

Task Min. Max. Mean SD

PA SegmentationEnglish Time 1

0 9 2.54 2.80


1 9 2.94 2.80


2 11 4.15 3.25


2 15 7.04 3.64


PA BlendingEnglish Time 1

0 6 2.66 1.79


3 7 3.88 2.25


5 10 4.04 2.68


8 15 12.38 2.40


PA IsolationEnglish Time 1

0 10 3.73 3.27

PA Isolation En-glish Time 2

2 12 5.46 3.56


5 15 7.23 4.08


2 15 9.27 3.72


PA SubstitutionEnglish Time 1

0 3 .65 1.65


0 7 1.31 2.02


0 8 2.27 2.16




0 10 3.54 2.53


PA DeletionEnglish Time 1

0 10 1.35 3.11


0 10 3.19 3.42


0 10 4.42 3.43


0 10 4.42 3.43

Table 1.1 and 1.2 further illustrate PA task performance. For the purposes ofanalysis, the first PA assessment interval was termed the pre-test and the finalassessment interval was termed the post-test. The number of items on each sub-test differed, so in order to compare difficulty among measures, a convertedmeans (CM) was used (Yopp, 1988). The CM was arrived at by averaging thepercent correct for each subject on each of the subtests.

Table 1.1. Pre-test performance

Pre-test Min. Max. Mean SD % correct CMPA TaskRhymeIsolation (15) 0 10 3.73 3.27 24.8% 0.266Blending (15) 0 6 2.66 1.79 17.0% 0.186Segmentation(15) 0 9 2.54 2.8 16.9% 0.171Deletion (10) 0 10 1.35 3.11 13.5% 0.094Substitution (15) 0 3 0.65 1.65 4.0% 0.066

Table 1.2.

Post-test Min. Max. Mean SD % correct CMPA TaskBlending (15) 8 15 12.38 2.4 82.5% 0.838Isolation (15) 2 15 9.27 3.72 61.8% 0.666Segmentation(15) 2 15 7.04 3.64 46.9% 0.473Deletion (10) 0 10 4.42 3.43 44.20% 0.469Substitution (15) 0 10 3.54 2.53 23.6% 0.266



Participants began with very low levels of PA in English. This finding isconsistent with findings from other work investigating the PA skills of non-literate mono-lingual adults.

In addition to development of PA over time for these learners, evidence fora hierarchy of task difficulty emerges between time 1 and time 4. Phonemesubstitution is most difficult for these participants, and isolation is the easiestfor them to perform at all time points. As mentioned earlier, task complexity hasbeen a focus of PA research with children and monolingual adults (Jimenez &Venegas 2004; Stahl & Murray 1994; Yopp 1988). The results here suggest thatPA for this group of students does fall into a pattern very similar to the relativeof difficulty Yopp (1988) found in her study with kindergarten children.12 In theYopp study, rhyme was found to be easiest for the children to perform, followedby isolation, and phoneme deletion the most difficult. In the present study, thehierarchy of difficulty for the participants, from least difficult to most difficult,was as follows: isolation/blending, segmentation, deletion and substitution.

In terms of the relationship between PA and decoding ability, which re-searchers investigating beginning reading in children learning an alphabeticsystem have shown to be a critical factor in the process, as mentioned earlierin this paper, the results of this research provide evidence for a high level ofcorrelation between PA and decoding ability at each time point (Table 2). Inother words, phonological awareness skills are related to successful decodingfor these learners.

Table 2. Correlations between English PA scores and English decoding ability at eachtime point

English PA

English Decoding ability Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4

Time 1 .87∗

Time 2 .90∗

Time 3 .85∗

Time 4 .79∗

Note. ∗ p < .0005.

The correlations were statistically significant (ranging from .79 to .90 with ps <.0005). The data suggest that PA in English is correlated to decoding abilityin English for adult second language learners acquiring initial literacy skills inEnglish and therefore, the presence of PA for ESL literacy level learners is acritical component in learning to read in English.



To determine which measures of PA in English are more predictive of de-coding ability in English the scores on the individual PA and decoding abilitytasks were used, rather than the composite scores. The correlational analyseswere followed by two multiple regression analyses at each time point with thefive PA as the predictors and either (a) invented word decoding scores or (b) realword decoding scores as the outcome variable.

The first regression analyses were performed at Time 1. Overall, 85.3%of the variance in real word decoding (RWD) was explained by the five PAtasks (F(5,20) = 23.13, p < .0005) and 87.5% of the variance in invented worddecoding (IWD) was explained by the five PA tasks (F(5,20) = 22.95, p <.0005).

In terms of the specific PA tasks, blending (β = .32, t = 2.58, p = .018),isolation (β = .38, t = 2.55, p = .019), and deletion (β = .66, t = 3.74, p =.001) were statistically significant for RWD. The partial correlation betweendeletion and real word decoding (.64) was higher than any of the other partialcorrelations. In terms of IWD, both deletion (β = .72, t = 4.42, p < .0005) andisolation (β = .36, t = 2.61, p = .017) were statistically significant. The partialcorrelation between deletion and invented word decoding (.70) was higher thanthat between isolation and invented decoding (.50), indicating that deletion wasthe best predictor of invented word decoding.

The second regression analyses were performed at Time 2 and at this pointin time 71.9% of the variance in RWD was explained by the five PA tasks(F(5,20) = 10.26, p < .0005). Additionally, 85.2% of the variance in IWD wasexplained by the five PA tasks (F(5,20) = 28.02, p < .0005). In terms of RWD,none of the PA tasks were statistically significant individually, but the partialcorrelation between blending and RWD (.38) was higher than any of the otherpartial correlations. When looking at the IWD task, only deletion (β = .51,t = 2.58, p = .018) was statistically significant. The partial correlation betweendeletion and IWD (.50) was also higher than any of the other partial correlations.

The third regression analyses were performed at Time 3 and 61.2% of thevariance in RWD was explained by the five PA tasks (F(5,20) = 6.32, p = .001).The five PA tasks explained. 71.4% of the variance in IWD (F(5,20) = 10.00,p < .0005) at this point in time. In terms of the specific PA tasks, none werestatistically significant but isolation (.40) had the highest partial correlations toRWD. In terms of the correlations between the five PA tasks and IWD, as withRWD at this time point, none were statistically significant, although deletionhad the highest partial correlation (.32).

The fourth regression analysis was performed at Time 4. At this point in time57.9% of the variance in RWD was explained by the five PA tasks (F(5,20) =5.50, p = .002). In terms of the specific PA tasks, only isolation (β = .44, t = 2.08,



p = .0503) approached statistical significance. The partial correlation betweenisolation and RWD (.42) was higher than any of the other partial correlations forRWD. In terms of IWD, 60.3% of the variance was explained by the five PA tasks(F(5,20) = 6.08, p = .001). In terms of the specific PA tasks, only substitution(β = .56, t = 2.42, p = .025) was statistically significant. The partial correlationbetween substitution and IWD (.48) was also higher than any of the other partialcorrelations.

5. Discussion

The present study establishes a relationship between PA and initial decodingability for adult second language learners who have low or no L1 literacy andwho share an L1 (Spanish). There is evidence for some tasks being more highlycorrelated to decoding in this population, but further investigation will be re-quired to firmly establish these tasks as the best predictors of L2 early reading.The results indicate that PA in the L2 is correlated with initial L2 decodingability for these adult ESL students. This supports the general claim that thereis a causal relationship between L2 PA and L2 decoding ability in literacy levelESL adult students.

In terms of correlations, there were significant correlations between specifictasks and decoding ability. Deletion was most highly correlated with inventedword decoding ability, and for real word decoding ability, deletion and isolationtasks were statistically significant. In research on PA with children, isolation hasbeen shown to be crucial to reading and evidence emerges for its importance inreal word decoding in this research with adult L2 adult learners as well.

What emerges from the above data is that PA in general is correlated withdecoding ability for adult L2 learners of English, but no one individual taskemerges as ‘the PA task’ which could be used as a diagnostic. At different times,different tasks seem to be more highly correlated individually than others; how-ever, the important conclusion is that PA in general is correlated with beginningdecoding ability for adult L2 populations and as such, with further investiga-tion into the role of task type could be used as a diagnostic tool as well as aninstructional device.

Although this research did not specifically address the issue of task differ-ence in measuring PA, research that has addressed this issue for children andadults (Jimenez & Venegas 2004; Lukatela, Carello, Shankweiler & Liberman1995; Morias, Cary, Alegria & Bertelson 1979; Stahl & Murry 1994) has foundphoneme isolation to be the easiest task for learners. An examination of themeans (Table 1.1) shows that isolation was the easiest for this group as well,



extending the earlier finding to older learners and the adult ELL population. Inrelated research, Jimenez and Venegas (2004) found that for low literacy adultnative speakers of Spanish found phoneme isolation to be the easiest PA taskto perform, which supported the findings from research with children (Stahl &Murray 1994). The results from the present study support the findings from bothof these studies.

The question of the path to initial reading ability for older ELLs with littleor no L1 reading skills is the primary focus of this research. Despite the currenteducational focus on reading and literacy skills for learners in all age groups,there has been little to no systematic research on word level strategies and initialliteracy development for older ELLs who are learning to read for the first timein their second language. In order to learn to read an alphabetic system, learnersmust first acquire a word level awareness (Calfee, Lindamood & Lindamood1973; Fox & Routh 1975; Treiman & Baron 1981; Tunmer & Nesdale 1985). Forearly readers comprehension depends on successful decoding ability (Gough &Juel 1991; Stanovich 1982). If the relationship between PA and decoding abilityis similar for adults and children learning to read for the first time, then, withfurther research, it may be established that subsequent reading comprehensionability is dependant on successful decoding ability for these adult L2 beginningreaders as well. Such a finding would have implications for practice in terms ofwhat pedagogically sound approaches to teaching reading would best meet theneeds of literacy level adult ELLs.

5.1. Pedagogical implications

The finding that PA is an important factor in decoding success, a critical stageof the alphabetic reading process has implications for practice. It would followthat a routine diagnostic should include a base-line measure of PA using one ofmany commercially and valid assessment measures. For learners who are foundto have deficits in PA abilities, pedagogical approaches that recognize this im-portance and include activities that promote awareness of the sound structureof words may facilitate the development of PA, enhance success during the de-coding stage, and put learners on a path to advanced literacy development. Therole of word level skills has been under- focused at the adult level for a varietyof reasons, but one notable reason is the prevalent use of oral assessment mea-sures in United States’ federally funded adult ESL programs. When programsand funding agencies rely on an instrument that focuses one skill over othersfor placement, student assessment, and, most importantly program evaluationand program funding, the types of skills that are included in this assessmentmay become the skills that are over emphasized in the program’s curriculum.



An oral assessment measure would certainly contribute to this if there is nocounterbalance in the form of reading and writing assessment.

For the students who have not mastered reading in their native language, butfind their way to a new country which places a great emphasis on the abilityto read and write for communication, social interaction, critical analysis, toacquire information and, perhaps most importantly, to achieve economic self-sufficiency, it is critical that they be put on a path of literacy developmentthat draws on their rich schema and gives them access to participation in thecommunity. These students need to develop the basic skills necessary to decodetext and then progress through the learning to read stage to one where they arereading to learn.

5.2. Directions for future research

The sample size in this study was small, and replication with larger popula-tions is a needed direction for future research. In addition, participants sharedthe same native language (Spanish) and investigation into populations with dif-ferent L1 backgrounds, including non-alphabetic backgrounds, is necessary tofully understand the relationship between PA and decoding in adults who arelearning to read for the first time or who are developing emergent literacy skillsin their second language. Finally, the nature of instruction was not the focusof the present study, and future research that investigates different instructionalapproaches and intervention protocols can be conducted to further unpack therole of PA in early literacy development for adult ESL literacy level students.

6. Conclusions

This study was designed to investigate the role of PA in initial decoding abilityfor beginning adult L2 readers of English. Evidence for the correlation of PAto decoding ability has emerged in the population under study. Like the childand monolingual adult studies that have informed this research, the data in thisstudy show that the correlations between English PA and English decoding abil-ity are statistically significant. Based on the inferential statistical analysis theconclusion can be drawn, as in the child studies, that PA in English is predic-tive of decoding ability in English for this population. In terms of which taskswere most highly correlated with decoding ability, for both real and inventedword decoding, deletion and isolation tasks were the best predictors of decodingability. This supports the child studies that discuss isolation as being a criticalfactor in learning to read an alphabetic system. In addition, the data suggest



that literacy level adult ESL students and monolingual children have similarunderlying cognitive processes, as evidenced for the similarity in the hierarchyof task difficulty and the correlation between phoneme isolation and decodingin English and general PA ability in English and English decoding ability. Whilethe results of this study extend the importance of PA skills and initial literacydevelopment in an alphabetic system to an additional population, the results area small contribution to the area of second language reading research. Furtherinvestigation into the development of initial reading in the second language foradults who have not acquired these skills in their L1 and are learning for the firsttime in their L2 will provide valuable information for researchers and praction-ers alike, and will help to inform practice and develop strategies that best meetthe needs of students such as the population under investigation in this work.

Appendix

Assessment Instruments Employed

Tastk Instument

Poneme Isolation Ponological Awareness Test (PAT)

Phoneme Substitution PAT

Phoneme Segmentation Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)

Phoneme Blending CTOPP

Phoneme Deletion CTOPP

Notes

1. National Reporting System (NRS) definitions of adult ESL levels which are usedat the U.S. Federal level to determine funding and program placement for adulteducation programs receiving federal funding; Beginning ESL Literacy: Individualhas no or minimal reading or writing skills in any language. May have little or nocomprehension of how print corresponds to spoken language and may have difficultyusing a writing instrument. Beginning ESL: Individual can recognize, read andwrite numbers and letters, but has a limited understanding of connected prose andmay need frequent re-reading; can write a limited number of basic sight words andfamiliar words and phrases; may also be able to write simple sentences or phrases,including very simple messages. Can write basic personal information. Narrativewriting is disorganized and unclear; inconsistently uses simple punctuation (e.g.,periods, commas, question marks); contains frequent errors in spelling.

2. Formerly the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS).



3. The NAAL defines literacy from a functional perspective as “the ability to use printedand written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to developone’s knowledge and potential.” (NAAL Question andAnswers, p. 1, USDOE, 2005).

4. The category ‘Non-literate in English’ is a newly established category that identifiesall adults who lack minimum basic reading skills necessary to participate in the mainNational Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). This category was established toanswer the outstanding issue of the broadness of category 1 in the 1992 NationalAdult Literacy Survey (NALS). The ‘non-literate in English’ category included anassessment for the least literate adults completing the survey (NAAL, USDOE,2005).

5. The identification of a respondent as Hispanic does not assume that the person is anon-native speaker (NNS) of English, but it can be interpreted from the report thata sub-set of those identified as Hispanic are NNS.

6. The NALS has divided literacy ability into three sections: Prose Literacy, DocumentLiteracy and Quantitative Literacy. In addition, the NALS includes a range of skillsthat focus on not only decoding and comprehension, but on the range of literacyskills and practices that an adult needs to function in society. Questions used authenticformats and involved test items such as using newspapers (to measure prose literacy)using a transportation schedule (to measure document literacy) and using a loanadvertisement that required participants to calculate interest (to measure quantitativeliteracy).

7. Yopp specifically investigated: rhyme, auditory discrimination, phoneme blending,phoneme counting, phoneme deletion, phoneme segmentation, sound isolation andword- to word matching.

8. National Reporting System (NRS) Guidelines: http://www.nrsweb.org/reports/EFL%20Table%204-4-06.doc

9. for ages 7–2410. All instructions were given in both Spanish and English.11. The number of items on each sub-test differed, so in order to compare difficulty

among measures, a converted means (CM) was used (Yopp, 1988). The CM wasarrived at by averaging the percent correct for each subject on each of the subtests.

12. Yopp (1988) did not use phoneme substitution as an assessment.

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Margo DelliCarpini received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Master’s degree inTESOL fromStony Brook University. She is a professor of TESOL at Lehman College, CUNY whereshe works with TESOL teacher candidates and conducts research on second language lit-eracy development and teacher collaboration. Email her at [email protected]



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