The Visual Word Recognition and Orthography Depth in Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

The study investigated whether the orthographic depth of first language (L1) affects the word recognition in second language (L2) learning. Fifteen native Chinese speakers and fifteen Greek native speakers were recruited to test their English naming ability. The results suggest that the orthographic depth has an impact on the L2 learning but word familiarity also determined the naming performance in certain extent. The data can be interpreted as the supportive evidence of implicating the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (ODH) on L2 learning (the original ODH mainly refers to the orthographic depth effect on L1). However, the regularity influence of spelling-to-sound rules was a very weak predictor of orthographic depth variations. The data is able to modify the strong dual route model of word recognition by providing some empirical evidence.