Kormos Judit

Judit Kormos is a Professor in Second Language Acquisition at Lancaster University. She was a key partner in the award-winning DysTEFL project sponsored by the European Commission and is a lead educator in the Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching massive open online learning course offered by FutureLearn.  She is the co-author of the book Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences with Anne Margaret Smith. She has published widely on the effect of dyslexia on learning additional languages including a book entitled The second language learning processes of students with specific learning difficulties. She is the author of multiple research papers that investigate the role of cognitive factors in second language acquisition.

How do first language linguistics skills help us identify struggling second language learners?

First language (L1) skills are important foundations for learning additional languages. They also play a significant role in how children, particularly at the early stages of acquiring another language, comprehend texts. L1 predictors of second language (L2) reading performance have been thoroughly investigated in previous research. However, with the wide-spread use of modern technological devices that allow for multi-modal language processing, such as listening to a text while simultaneously reading it, it is necessary to examine an extended range of language comprehension processes. Understanding the role of L1 skills in instructed L2 language learning contexts can help us to predict whether children who have L1 literacy-related difficulties in primary education will face challenges in learning an additional language and can assist in devising effective pedagogical interventions. In this talk I will first give an overview of what previous research findings reveal about the role of L1 predictors in text comprehension in different modalities. Next I will describe two studies we have conducted to  examine the contribution of low-level L1 skills to L2 text comprehension outcomes of young learners of English in Slovenia and Hungary. In the Slovenian study, we were also interested in uncovering the potential benefits of multi-modal text presentation for students with different L1 literacy profiles. In the Hungarian study, we investigated whether children with low L1 literacy profiles understand written texts better when they have more time to read. The two studies shed light on the differential role of L1 predictors of reading comprehension in the two contexts. They also have important implications for assessing and developing young L2 learners’ text comprehension skills.