Bilingualism
Can a word-recognition quirk predict foreign-language reading success?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Beginners who leaned more on look-alike words shared with Spanish went on to read English better, but for intermediate learners the reverse was true.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Prospective predictive study: an English lexical decision task (cognates vs non-cognates), digit span and non-verbal IQ were measured mid-year, then used in backward regressions to predict official reading exam scores months later, separately for A2 and B1 learners.
- N
- Two separate groups: 62 A2 (low-proficiency) learners in Experiment 1 and one hundred and five B1 (intermediate) learners in Experiment 2.
- Population
- Adult native Spanish speakers (aged roughly 19 to 69) taking English classes at a public language school in the Basque Country, Spain.
- Outcome
- Official end-of-year English reading comprehension exam score, predicted from the size of each learner's cognate effect (reaction-time difference between non-cognate and cognate words) plus IQ, working memory, age, age of acquisition and self-rated proficiency.
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Key findings
Both groups recognised cognates faster and more accurately than non-cognates. Among beginners, a larger cognate advantage predicted better exam scores, alongside higher IQ and higher self-rated proficiency, with the model explaining about 25% of the variance. Among intermediate learners, a smaller cognate advantage predicted better scores, along with earlier age of first English exposure, better working memory and higher IQ, explaining about 20% of the variance; chronological age did not predict success in either group.
Methodology
Spanish-speaking adults in English classes at two levels (beginner A2 and intermediate B1) did a computer task deciding whether letter strings were real English words; half of the real words were cognates that look like their Spanish translations (such as 'minute'/'minuto') and half were not. They also did a digit-span working-memory test and a short non-verbal IQ test. About 4 months later, their official reading comprehension exam scores were collected and predicted from these measures.
Limitations
The design is correlational, so it does not show that changing how much learners rely on their native language would change their reading scores. The two proficiency levels were different people, not the same learners followed over time, and they also differed in working memory and IQ, so the 'shift' from positive to negative is inferred rather than observed. Backward stepwise regression in modest samples can capitalise on chance, working memory was measured with a simple forward digit span, and all participants lived in a bilingual Spanish-Basque region with one language pairing tested.
How this study connects
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