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

There is a noticeable advantage then for emerging L2 or L3 literates in accessing novel material if they are adequately exposed in the TL or L2. Among these exposures, the ability to distinguish words is highly considered to be a product of ‘self-teaching’ since phonological awareness cannot satisfy the bounds of beginning learners (Cunningham, et al., 2002). This notion was affirmed by the study of Pae, Sevcik, and Morris (2010) when they recognized that phonological awareness is a good predictor of reading success but as the reading task grows more in complexity automated recall facilitates fluency. With the script-dependence hypothesis, we can ascertain that in reading and word choice drills, GPC familiarization of a language contributes to fewer errors. These errors, however, are orthography-specific, which is very telling of what cognitive process may be at work in varying orthographic depth. This consideration would positively lead to modeling a more efficient orthographic literacy. Linguistic transfer processes also surfaced along withour survey of hypotheses. Linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis exemplifies the linguistic aspect of orthography acquisition as the proponents identified transfers in phonology and shared linguistic constraints between two orthographies. This reminds us of Cummins’ cognitive academic language proficiency but with a greater curve to literacy and orthography. Meanwhile, Schwartz, Kahn-Howitz, and Share (2014) comprehensively knit altogether the aforementioned variables. To put it simply, the case of emergent Circassian English literates demonstrated extensive use of prior literacy experience and execution of cognitive repertoire (p. 43) in advancing literacy in the English language. This study duly affirmed the script-dependence hypothesis (Geva & Siegel, 2000) and linguistic and orthographic learning hypothesis (Kahn-Horwitz et al., 2011).

Apart from the works highlighted above, the studies surveyed for this paper have given us several emphases. These emphases, though varying, still yielded to a whole and more meaningful understanding of the constructs of orthography in literacy.

Significantly, we came to understand that mapping principles, as in phonology and morphology, are different across orthographies (Wang, 2005) and though this may be valid, cognitive processes enable predictive literacy development via sound-to-symbol identification, manipulation, and fluency of retrieval (Caravolas, Lervåg, Mousikou, Efrim, Litavsky, Onochie-Quintanilla, Salas, Schöffelova, Defior, Mikulajova, Seidlová-Málkova, & Hulme, 2012). While there are observable limitations to linguistic transfer, we can see that cognates and shared alphabetic features may facilitate literacy in the TL (Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby, 2009). Also, this shared orthographic function aids sound perception to the early stages of learning (Pytlyk, 2011). Moreover, literature on the segmented phases of cross-orthographic literacy (Seymour, 2006) provided future direction to the role of instruction time in teaching deep or shallow orthographies (Zaretsky, Kraljevic, Core, & Lencek 2009; Everson 2011). In sequential literacy, a universal thread in phonology and writing can be attested whatever their orthographic depth is (Rose, et al., 2010; case of Korean-American). By and large, studies similarly echo the importance of exposure to the target orthography for the development of strategies in literacy (Matsumo, 2013; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Cunningham, et al., 2011; Schwartz et al., 2014). With the hope to unify the studies in cross-orthographic literacy, Frost (2012) attempted to establish a universal model for literacy (cf. Seymour, 2006). This is to overarch previous studies and promote a universal model of reading primarily harnessing frequency of letter distribution and cues in facilitating acquisition. In a practical sense, this statistical direction is a natural cognitive strategy for 'resource saving' (p. 274).

            This field is still developing and with present methodologies results of several theories converged. With this, perhaps the recent study of Goodwin, August, and Calderon (2015) must be mentioned. The study utilized several theories including grain-size theory and the ODH, among others. They drew our attention to two things: (a) the actual processing of an orthography, in this case Spanish as L1 and English as TL, via large grain, i.e., morphology, such as affixes, and small grain, sound bits or phonology; and (b) the role of teaching instruction to this process. Firstly, this implies that emerging literates process the TL in larger chunks and eventually shifts to the phonological tasks of the orthography, i.e., small grain. More specifically, in a more transparent orthography, granulation tends to be processed via small grain while in deep orthography via large grain. And, secondly, instructional support in the underlying process of acquisition directly contributes to cohesive TL processing (p. 623). Language instruction used by teachers then should not be arbitrary but in itself dedicated especially to beginning and emerging literates in their formative years.