Does Writing System Matter? Validating the Simple View of Reading in Adult Second Language Learners

The simple view of reading (SVR) holds that reading comprehension is a product of decoding and linguistic comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990), and has been supported by substantial evidence from monolingual reading and child bilingual reading research (see meta�]analyses in Florit & Cain, 2011; Melby�]Lervag & Lervag, 2011; Quinn & Wagner, 2018). However, the majority of studies have focused on languages that adopt an alphabetic writing system (e.g., English and Spanish). Also, there is much less attention to whether the SVR applies to adult second language (L2) learners. The overall goal of the proposed research is to expand current understanding of to what extent and how component skills (i.e., decoding and linguistic comprehension) contribute to adult L2 reading comprehension, as well as the impact of the distance between first language (L1) and L2 writing systems. This research investigates the SVR in adult L2 English learners of three different first�]language (L1) writing system backgrounds (i.e., Korean/alphabet; Arabic/abjad, and Chinese/morphosyllabary, see a categorization of five writing systemby by Perfetti, 2003) with matched L2 proficiency, and whether SVR is applicable to adult L1 English�]speaking learner reading in L2 Chinese. The purpose is two�]fold: (1) to examine whether SVR is valid for adult L2 English reading acquisition in readers of the same target L2, yet different L1 writing system backgrounds; (2) to explore whether SVR can explain adult L2 reading comprehension in an L2 that is typologically different from alphabetic languages (i.e., Chinese with a morphosyllabary writing system).