Ghoti: Orthographic Literacy in Focus: Acquisition by Samejon (2015)

The ODH has given us a primer on the concepts of how various orthographies are rendered. On the same note, unlocking these conventions across orthographies, not only on how they are written but also as to why they are written in such manner, is matter of interest to literacy studies. Studies in the field of literacy have grown from understanding reading and writing abilities to a contextualized phenomenon involving social models and cultural dimensions (Warriner, 2013, pp. 530-532). The latter is the observable social turn in the study of literacy and literacies, whose concepts are not examined within this paper. Considering our present aims, the former definition and the subcomponents/skills of literacy, i.e., phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary (Li et al., 2014) will prove to be useful as a working definition. This premise leads us to consider three hypotheses that are instrumental to unlocking literacy irrespective of orthographic variances: self-teaching, script-dependence, and the linguistic and orthographic proximity.

The self-teaching hypothesis rallies that that phonological processing, though vital, is not enough for orthographic learning (Cunningham, Perry, Stantovich, & Share, 2002) that is, in forming, storing, and accessing orthographic components. Therefore, already existing orthographic knowledge facilitates maximum decoding ability rather than simply relying on phonological process as seen in emerging L2 literates. They (Cunningham et al., 2002) tested the hypothesis in a deep orthography, English, from the initial testing via Hebrew (Share, 1999). This time, general cognitive ability in recall and orthographic discrimination ability was considered.  Interpretation of data shows that in reading and orthographic choice tasks, orthographic knowledge relies on previous success of exposure (Cunningham, et al., p. 196; see Share, 1999, methodology), thus, ‘self-teaching’ happens and a faint reliance on phonological processing is observed.

The second hypothesis in consideration is the script-dependence hypothesis. It posits that variance between L1-L2 orthography possibly contributes to the ease of word decoding accuracy, which is due to cross-linguistic transfer (Geva & Segiel, 2000). In a study to prove such claim, Geva and Siegel (2000) observed English L1 grade students acquiring Hebrew as L2. They found those favorable circumstances including ample exposure and language of instruction, and the lesser demand in Hebrew orthography allayed L2 acquisition more effectively than the students’ L1. Cross-linguistically, they argue that once familiarity in the L1 GPC rules is acquired, it approximates to the L2 up to the point where sub-skills and strategies need to be developed.

Sensing the need for a more ‘linguistic’ approach came the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis. This hypothesis is conceptualized by Kahn-Horwitz, Schwartz, and Share (2011), who, when having tested script-dependence hypothesis, discovered the challenges faced by emerging triliterates in decoding short vowels and consonant clusters in English as the TL. It was first thought that cognitive abilities such as phonological awareness and working memory are independent of specific language experiences (p. 138). This study, however, found that these two interplay with the orthography of the language being acquired. Novel phonemes and the observed variations in (a) writing the sound clusters /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ as well as short vowel and (b) silent ‘e’ reading cannot just be accounted by script dependency. Concerning literacy, they went on to conclude:

[…] that the specific advantage of emerging Russian–Hebrew- speaking triliterates on short vowel decoding and spelling is a result of the similar way the Russian and English scripts graphically represent vowels and not due to a triliteracy experience per se. (p. 152)

More attention is then attributed to cross-linguistic processes than literacy transfers, as in this case. They further invited researchers to expand this hypothesis by examining languages that have phonemic properties in common but greater writting system differences and vice versa.