Phonological awareness in Cantonese ESL students

grantor: University of TorontoAccording to the Contrastive Analysis, Differential Markedness and the Feature Competition hypotheses, specific features disparate between L1 and L2 may engender negative transfer in L2 learners, often instantiated as errors in their perception and production. In ESL learners, L1 interference would occur specifically in acquiring disparate features in L2, or positive transfer would occur for equivalent and similar features. The resulting developmental process in L2 phonology in ESL learners will thus be disparate from that of L1 English speakers. Different performances on phonological tasks by L1 and L2 children at different times in the present study provide support for different developmental patterns of awareness of English phonology. Evidence of an L1 effect was found in the positive transfer on rhyme discrimination and negative transfer on phoneme alliteration and blending in the L2 group. Theoretical implications as well as implications for programming, teaching and assessment for ESL students are discussed.M.A