The Cross-linguistic Contribution of Phonological Awareness in Word Reading: An Examination of Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory in Korean EFL Context

Abstract

This study aimed to examine Korean EFL elementary students’ phonological awareness (PA) in Korean (L1) and English (L2) and to identify which sub-unit(s) of L1 and L2 PA is related to word decoding abilities in L2. More specifically, this study tested whether the psychological grain size theory postulated by Ziegler and Goswami (2005) was applicable to the cross-linguistic facilitations of L1 phonological awareness for L2 reading skills. Ninety nine Korean fifth graders participated in this study. The participants’ Korean and English phonological awareness and English word decoding ability were measured. Our findings indicated that while rime was the most salient phonological unit in English, syllable was the most salient phonological unit in Korean. In addition, the psycholinguistic grain size theory was fully supported within the participants’ L2, while it was only partially supported cross-linguistically in predicting L2 word decoding abilities.