Proceedings of the - British Association for Applied Linguistics

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Introduction
Repetition by a recently arrived teacher in a complementary classroom
Rika Yamashita
The Development and Cross-Language
Transfer of Phonological Processing Skills
Among Taiwanese Young Learners of
English
Yu-cheng Sieh
Tamkang University, Taiwan
ycsieh@mail.tku.edu.tw
Abundant research has shown that phonological sensitivity—an ability to
analyze spoken language into smaller sound units—plays an important role
in learning to read alphabetic scripts among native English-speaking
children (Bowey, 2001; Metsala, 1999), children of other alphabetic
languages (de Jong, Seveke, & van Veen, 2000; Winskel & Widjaja, 2007),
and children using non-Roman alphabetic scripts (Shatil & Share, 2003;
Sieh, 2007).
Despite the unanimous view on the crucial role of phonological sensitivity,
disagreements have persisted over whether its development followed a
stage-like or a diverse pattern (Burgess & Lonigan, 1998; Muter &
Snowling, 1998; Gottardo, Stanovich, & Siegel, 1996). In addition, recent
bilingual research has revealed a positive cross-language transfer of
phonological sensitivity in speakers of other alphabetic languages (Cisero
& Royer, 1995; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999).
Bialystok, Luk, and Kwan (2005) further proposed that such skills were
transferred only when both languages were written in the same system, i.e.,
alphabetic system.
In stark contrast, Chinese learners of English are at a great disadvantage
because Chinese has long been regarded as a language requiring no
knowledge of phonological awareness. They consequently seem to develop
no phonological skills in the L1, let alone transfer them to the L2
(Bialystok et al., 2005; Cheung, Chen, Lai, Wong, & Hills, 2001; de
Gelder, Vroomen, & Bertelson, 1993). The deficiency in phonological
awareness was attributed to a complete lack of sound cues in the
logographic script (Cheung, 1999).
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