Dissertations for English Language Teaching (ELT)

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Do second language children learn to read English differently from first language children?
(The British University in Dubai (BUiD), 2008-09) Al-Jenaibi, Layla
This present study compared the differences in approaches to reading aloud, of two English native speakers to that of two native Arabic speakers, with English as their second language. Even though two of the subjects were native English speakers, the spoken English language of all the subjects was on an equal par. The subjects all attend an international American school, where the entire curriculum is taught in English. The subjects were tested from the end of their kindergarten year and into the beginning of the time in grade 1. The instruction in the school for beginning readers is through phonics and whole word recognition. The subjects’ miscues were recorded as either errors in whole word, vowel or consonant, onset / rime, semantics and also their approach to decoding an unknown word. Results showed that one of the second language subjects had an advanced level of reading ability than the other three subjects. The two native English subjects showed a heightened level of phonic awareness than the two non-native subjects. This study found that there were no differences between first language and second language children when learning to read English.