The Impact of Language Opacity and Proficiency on Reading Strategies in Bilinguals: An Eye Movement Study

Reading strategies vary across languages according to orthographic depth - the complexity of the grapheme in relation to phoneme conversion rules - notably at the level of eye movement patterns. We recently demonstrated that a group of early bilinguals, who learned both languages equally under the age of seven, presented a first fixation location (FFL) closer to the beginning of words when reading in German as compared with French. Since German is known to be orthographically more transparent than French, this suggested that different strategies were being engaged depending on the orthographic depth of the used language. Opaque languages induce a global reading strategy, and transparent languages force a local/serial strategy. Thus, pseudo-words were processed using a local strategy in both languages, suggesting that the link between word forms and their lexical representation may also play a role in selecting a specific strategy. In order to test whether corresponding effects appear in late bilinguals with low proficiency in their second language (L2), we present a new study in which we recorded eye movements while two groups of late German-French and French-German bilinguals read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words. Since, a transparent reading strategy is local and serial, with a high number of fixations per stimuli, and the level of the bilingual participants' L2 is low, the impact of language opacity should be observed in L1. We therefore predicted a global reading strategy if the bilinguals' L1 was French (FFL close to the middle of the stimuli with fewer fixations per stimuli) and a local and serial reading strategy if it was German. Thus, the L2 of each group, as well as pseudo-words, should also require a local and serial reading strategy. Our results confirmed these hypotheses, suggesting that global word processing is only achieved by bilinguals with an opaque L1 when reading in an opaque language; the low level in the L2 gives way to a local and serial reading strategy. These findings stress the fact that reading behavior is influenced not only by the linguistic mode but also by top-down factors, such as readers' proficiency.

The life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe /

The diary of an Englishman shipwrecked for almost thirty years on a small isolated island where, using wit and industry, he manages to build life anew.

Modern German lyrics : an introduction to German songs of to-day & to-morrow ...

Mode of access: Internet.

German legislation for the occupied territories of Belgium; official texts,

Text in German, French, and Flemish.

The Keim and allied families in America and Europe.

Editor: De B. Randolph Keim.

A general catalogue of valuable and rare old books, in the ancient and modern languages, and various classes of literature; which are now on sale at the prices affixed to each,

Error in paging: 289 numbered 298.

The complaint and consolation, or, Night thoughts on life, death and immortality /

Title page and text in single line border; gilt edges.

Jihad and Islam in World War I : Studies on the Ottoman Jihad at the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's "Holy War Made in Germany" /

This books investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation, but also its effects in the wider Middle East. It looks at the German hopes and British fears of a worldwide rising of Muslims in the colonial empires. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

[Welcoming statement to the IFLA participants from Jim Edgar, Secretary of State and State Librarian.]

Title supplied by cataloger.

Songs and ballads;

Mode of access: Internet.

Reminiscences of Scottish life and character /

Includes index.

Religion and philosophy in Germany: a fragment.

Translation of Zur geschichte der religion und philosophie in Deutschland.

Notable women in history; the lives of women who in all ages, all lands and in all womanly occupations have won fame and put their imprint on the world's history,

A group of classic dames.--Many queens and some martyrs.--Women of wit and pleasure.--Priestesses of woman's cause.--Some women of the footlights.--Women in arts and letters.--Women who stand alone.

<Witty and Witless>

"The manuscript now reproduced in facsimile is a fragment, but little can have been lost beyond the introduction. The original is now in the British museum (press-mark Harl. 367), and is described in Wanley's catalogue 'as a book in folio wherein are contained many letters and fragments, with various poems ...' The present interlude or 'disputation' is the forty-first item in the volume, folios 110-119 ... Mr. Collier named it 'Wit and Folly,' and under this title it was for the first time printed by the Percy society in 1846."

Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language

The study reported in this article is a part of a large-scale study investigating syntactic complexity in second language (L2) oral data in commonly taught foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, and Spanish; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, in preparation). In this article, preliminary findings of the analysis of the Japanese data are reported. Syntactic complexity, which is referred to as syntactic maturity or the use of a range of forms with degrees of sophistication (Ortega, 2003), has long been of interest to researchers in L2 writing. In L2 speaking, researchers have examined syntactic complexity in learner speech in the context of pedagogic intervention (e.g., task type, planning time) and the validation of rating scales. In these studies complexity is examined using measures commonly employed in L2 writing studies. It is assumed that these measures are valid and reliable, but few studies explain what syntactic complexity measures actually examine. The language studied is predominantly English, and little is known about whether the findings of such studies can be applied to languages that are typologically different from English. This study examines how syntactic complexity measures relate to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language. An in-depth analysis of speech samples from 33 learners of Japanese is presented. The results of the analysis are compared across proficiency levels and cross-referenced with 3 other proficiency measures used in the study. As in past studies, the length of T-units and the number of clauses per T-unit is found to be the best way to predict learner proficiency; the measure also had a significant linear relation with independent oral proficiency measures. These results are discussed in light of the notion of syntactic complexity and the interfaces between second language acquisition and language testing. Adapted from the source document