An Investigation of the Cross-Language Transfer of Reading Skills: Evidence from a Study in Nigerian Government Primary Schools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

An investigation of the cross-language transfer of reading skills: Evidence from as study in Nigerian Government Primary Schools.

 

Reviewer 1

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper “An investigation of the cross-language transfer of reading skills: Evidence from a study in Nigerian Government Primary Schools”. The study examines cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills. The topic is very interesting and relevant. The main problems relate to organizing the paper and providing details about the methodology. Below are comments per section.

Thank you to the reviewer for allowing us to improve our article and the comments you have provided. Your time on this has been very much appreciated.

The study’s goal is missing in the Introduction.

This is now in the introduction.

The Introduction states the problem faced by Educationalists in the Nigerian educational system, which should be moved to the end of the Literature review, before the research questions (which appear in the Results instead of the end of the literature review).

Yes, we have moved these to the section around the present study. Thank you.

I recommend to restructure the Introduction and the Literature Review sections. First, what now appears in the Introduction relates to the specific characteristics of the country and I recommend moving it towards the end of the Literature review.

Thank you we have now moved this section as suggested.

Instead, the Introduction should state the (scientific) merits of the study, its importance and implications.

Thank you. We have changed the first part of the introduction to this:

Currently children in Nigeria become part of an English immersion programme at grade 4 to provide them with the skills, knowledge, and ability to participate in a globalized world and to become global citizens. It is important to note that heritage language is part of culture, history, and identity. The teaching of Hausa (heritage language) alongside English can be regarded as controversial. The Nigerian government are currently contemplating changing their current curriculum so that English is not taught until there are more Hausa literacy skills to build upon. Therefore, the importance of this study is to consider linguistic interdependence and any bidirectional influences of literacy skills when learning to read in Hausa and English. This will have implications for policy, as well as making an important and innovative contribution to understanding and knowledge. Using empirical data that looks at word reading skills (decoding), phonological awareness (sounds of letters rather than letter names/phonemes), this study sets out to investigate the cross-language transfer of reading skills in 488 government schools sited in 11 north Nigerian states. The implications of the findings could inform the current debate at the country level around teaching languages in the Nigeria curriculum either concurrently or sequentially.

The L1-L2 use is confusing. Do the authors keep the L1/majority-L1/minority distinction consistently? Minority is often associated with L1/home language, but here it is used as the majority language quite often. Please make this use more transparent or maybe use a different terminology.

We use L1 for Hausa, that is the home language and L2 for English which is the second language. We continue with this distinction throughout where L1 is the home language and L2 is the language you learn at school as the ‘globalised language’. We have checked throughout the whole paper to ensure consistency. We have made this clearer in the literature review as well.

The section on transfer should be more informative, especially since this is the main problem addressed by the research. It’s not enough to state which studies were conducted, the authors should describe how transfer was shown in these studies.

Our study does not have any data on transfer and hence this is not the focus on our paper. We don’t look at how transfer occurs. Therefore, we have not focused on this in our literature review. The focus here is on the bidirectional relationships of cross language transfer. However, this is a good point and something we will consider for future research in this area.

In the literature review there seem to be three issues – no detrimental effect, transfer, and levels of attainment in two languages, all mixed in one paragraph. I suggest separating them and reviewing the literature on each, while summarizing findings and avoiding quotes.

First, we feel we need to keep the quotes as our research uses Cummins’ interdependence hypothesis as our central theory which underpins the whole article.

The literature review is split into continents/countries rather than the ‘effect’. We feel as our research adds significantly to the literature in Africa this was a way to highlight country/continent specific research in this area.

However, we have taken your advice and separated into a different paragraph the Inuit community study.

The decoding and phonological awareness section does not present enough information.It states well-known predictors of reading in any language. I would recommend to focus on cross-linguistic differences and similarities and maybe transfer of these skills. It would be beneficial to describe orthographic similarities and differences between Hausa and English. Were these differences accounted for when testing the children?

We have added the following in the Instruments section (2.3):

No two languages are phonologically identical. Hausa and English have some similar phonemes. Hausa has 47 phonemes and English 44. Both languages have some vowel phonemes in common. To take this into consideration children took four different tests, two in Hausa and two in English.

The tests used are described in the methods section under instruments as you suggested. Therefore differences were accounted for when testing the children as the tests are specifically Hausa sounds and reading of words and separately English sounds and reading of words.

The present study section is also not adequately written. The way it is presented now confuses the reader – is it part of the methodology? The section should state the goal and the research questions which appear later in the Results. The first sentence in the Method belongs to Introduction.

We have now done this.

The Method should include the sections of Participants, Materials and Procedure separately with a greater level of details.

We have divided the methods section into your suggested headings.

“their letter sound knowledge (phonemes/phonological awareness)”– do the authors refer to letter knowledge or phonological awareness, these are two separate skills and both are predictors of reading. What the authors call phonological awareness tests seem to be letter recognition. Provide more information on the real and pseudo word reading materials – what were the types of words in terms of phonology and orthography.

Please see the section on methods which states what the tests are which should make this more clear:

The English letter sound knowledge test assessed the pupil’s ability to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) for 41 different graphemes, including 17 diagraphs based on the accepted English sounds and their most common grapheme representations. The English word reading test (word) was the 2019 version of the UK Government’s “Phonics Screening Check”. This test assesses the pupil’s ability to read 20 invented decodable words, such as “yad”, and 20 real decodable words, such as “plug”. Decodable means that they do not have any irregularities in their spelling, and so follow the standard sound system.

The Hausa letter sound knowledge test assessed the pupil’s ability to pronounce the sounds for 35 different graphemes, including 10 diagraphs. The Hausa word reading test assessed the pupil’s ability to read 20 invented and 20 real decodable Hausa words. Both tests were developed by linguistic academics from the Federal University of Gusau, Zamfara State, Nigeria.

Results

The age and gender information should be moved to the Methods/participants.

This is now in the methods section thank you.

Table 1 – give information on how these data should be interpreted, what is the maximal possible score?

We have added in the following:

Table 1 below sets out the means and standard deviations for test scores in Hausa (L1) and English (L2) for phonological awareness (sounds) and decoding (reading) for 2,328 grade 3 pupils experiencing 4-5 structured English phonics reading sessions per week. The maximum score for reading is 40 in both Hausa and English. The maximum for sounds English is 41 and 35 for Hausa.

Discussion

Correlations are not directional, so I wouldn’t say “bidirectional” correlations.

Thank you we have removed as suggested.

Since I’m not sure that the study assessed phonological awareness, the discussion leaves questions regarding the role of phonological awareness. Besides, the Discussion repeats the findings rather than interprets them.

We feel we do this, that is interpret the findings, set out the implications of the study with regards policy as well as set out the research compared to the literature:

This paper investigates the linguistic interdependence of grade 3 children studying in government primary schools in northern Nigeria who are learning to read in Hausa (L1) and English (L2) simultaneously. 2,328 grade 3 children were tested on their Hausa and English phonological awareness and decoding skills after participating in a two-year English structured reading intervention programme as part of their school day. Three research questions were considered to investigate the overarching interest concerning whether there is any bidirectionality of language crossover when a tailored systematic instructional process is used to teach children to read.

 

The first question considers whether there are any associations between phoneme and decoding scores between and within L1 and L2. Carrying out bivariate correlations we find a large and strongly positively significant correlation between L1 and L2 test scores. As found in a meta-analysis of 22 studies by Melby Lervåg and Lervåg [46] both instructional language at school (L1 and L2) and the closeness of the writing system between Hausa and English would seem to play a role in the correlations between Hausa and English phonological awareness (r=0.674, p<0.01) and Hausa and English decoding (r=0.798, p<0.01). Phonological awareness is seen as a predictor of reading ability across alphabetic languages [31, 42-44]. The bivariate correlations between L1 (Hausa) phonological awareness and L2 (English) decoding (r=0.674, p<0.01) and L2 (English) phonological awareness and L1 (Hausa) decoding (r=0.553, p<0.01) would seem to add further support to this literature. Decoding is a foundational skill that allows for reading fluency [47, 48] and is built on the knowledge and awareness of phonology [49]. Looking at L1 phonological awareness to L1 decoding (r=0.751, p<0.01) and L2 phonological awareness to L2 decoding (r=0.691, p<0.01) with this set of children their awareness of phonology allows for the foundational skill of decoding.

The second question explores the bidirectional associations between L1 and L2 decoding as per the interdependence hypothesis [22, 25] using a feedback path model [53, 54]. Concerning bidirectionality the feedback path model illustrates that L1 word predicts L2 word and vice versa. That is L1 word score is a predictor of L2 word score (β=0.545, p<0.001) and L2 word score predicts L1 word score (β=0.200, p<0.001). L1 and L2 phoneme scores are a strong predictor of decoding scores.

The final question uses multi-level modelling to consider the variation in test scores and how this affect predicts associations. Almost two thirds of the variation in the word score (L1 63.1% and L2 67.2%) is attributable to the pupil level and one third to the school level (L1 36.8% and L2 32.2%). Hausa word score is significantly predicted through Hausa sound (ES 0.511) and English word score (ES 0.735). English word score is significantly predicted through Hausa word (ES 0.811) and English sound score (ES 0.467). Our findings clearly support Cummins’ Interdependence Hypothesis [22, 25] the overall results supporting bidirectionality and linguistic interdependence. This has implications for language policy and classroom instruction showing the importance of cross-language transfer between reading skills.

The findings show that it is possible for literacy skills in L1 and L2 to be built alongside each other. L1 and L2 literacy skills are bidirectional. The teaching of bilingual education allows for a common underlying proficiency in both languages as they are not separate but connected to each other. When practices are structured and part of a planned curriculum there will be a positive effect on both L1 and L2 languages. The transfer of literacy related skills occurs both ways and hence bidirectional. In the Nigeria context, teaching L1 and L2 for the first three years of primary education where L2 is taught as a subject would seem to be the correct approach alongside structured and planned curriculum. This research finds no negative affect on either language with regards phonology awareness or decoding. Currently children in Nigeria become part of an English immersion programme at grade 4 to provide them with the skills, knowledge and ability to participate in a globalised world and to become global citizens. Language is part of cultural heritage, history, and identity. Therefore, to achieve the goal of preparing young people for global participation as well as expanding and strengthening the language of their heritage there needs to be a meaningful inclusion of Hausa in the school curriculum.

 

The last sentence is confusing – isn’t Hausa part of the school curriculum?

We have made this less confusing. Our point is that although the children become part of an English immersion programme, Hausa still needs to prominently feature as part of the school day.

“Therefore, to achieve the goal of preparing young people for global participation as well as expanding and strengthening the language of their heritage Hausa needs to continue to play a meaningful part in the school curriculum”.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

One other comment is that sentences did feel long at times. If these sentences include multiple clauses, and many do, it would be pest to punctuate them accordingly. The use of commas would do the trick here nicely.

Author Response

An investigation of the cross-language transfer of reading skills: Evidence from as study in Nigerian Government Primary Schools.

 

Reviewer 2

Dear Reviewer, we would like to thank you for taking the time to read and review our article. We believe the comments below will improve our submission and therefore thank you for these.

We have made changes to the document and these changes have been highlight. We also address your points below.

General recommendations:

• Please make sure that the font size is consistent throughout the manuscript.

Many thanks. We have changed the font size to 10 throughout.

• Do you happen to have any data about phonemic awareness for children who attend either a monolingual English school or a monolingual Hausa school? If not, I certainly do not think that this is a limitation, but I do think it would be useful to mention this. The article therefore shows that phonemic awareness in two languages develops in tandem, but it cannot weigh in on if bilingual phonemic awareness is more effective than monolingual phonemic awareness (e.g., learning phonemic awareness in languages X and Y leads to higher knowledge in language Y than simply learning in language Y only). I think this is a point that the researchers could draw out.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any data on monolingual schools in Nigeria. All schools teach L1 (home) and L2 (English). We are using Cummins’ theory and hence the underpinning of bidirectionality.

• One other comment is that sentences did feel long at times. If these sentences include multiple clauses, and many do, it would be pest to punctuate them accordingly. The use of commas would do the trick here nicely.

Yes, we have read through and inserted commas where needed. Thank you.

Abstract and introduction:

• In the abstract (no line numbers), the authors write “L1 word predicts L2 word and vice versa.” What is meant by this?

We have added to the abstract to clarify this as below:

“To do so a total of 2,328 grade 3 children were tested on their Hausa and English phonological awareness (sounds) and reading decoding skills (word) after participating in a two-year English structured reading intervention programme as part of their school day”.

• In the first paragraph on page 2, what is meant by mixed methods approach to phonics? Perhaps the authors could provide specific methods used in each curriculum, or simply remove this piece. Also, the font in this section is larger than in the preceding paragraphs.

Thank you. We have taken out the term ‘mixed methods’ that may have been confusing and thus now reads as follows:

“This focuses on L1 (Hausa) literacy development in northern Nigeria, through a combination of whole language and phonics approaches. The Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI+) programme adopts a transitional approach, with L1 (Hausa) being the focus in grades 1 and 2, taught using systematic phonics, and L2 (English) literacy being introduced from grade 3. The Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN), Teacher Development Programme (TDP) and Jolly Phonics all focus on English literacy development, with ESSPIN and TDP applying a combination of whole language and phonics approaches and Jolly Phonics adopting a systematic phonics approach”.

• I think that the content at the end of the first paragraph of p. 3, beginning with “According to Usborne et al., [34] the cross transfer between L2 and L1 is not observed in this case,” needs unpacking. Unto this point, the authors have stated that there is resoundingly positive evidence of crosslinguistic transfer in the obtainment of literacy skills. I believe that the end of this paragraph suggests that this isn’t always the case. Perhaps even some connecting words to imply this juxtaposition would be useful, but I think the authors could turn this into a separate paragraph that shows that appropriate transfer of knowledge depends on a well-structured and articulated curriculum. Without an explanation, this does not seem clear to me as a reader.

Yes you are correct. We have now made this into a paragraph on its own as you suggest. Thank you.

Study and methodology:

• Page 4 begins with a map of Nigeria. To what does this refer? Please provide a figure number both below the image and in the text to make this reference clearer.

We have highlighted in red the “Figure 1 Map of Nigeria showing states” and where (Figure 1) appears in the text.

• Related to the previous comment, the researchers mention synthetic phonics. Please spend some time defining this approach to phonics, as well as past research and citations.• What was the decision to include 17 digraphs? This makes sense, but is this a random subset of digraphs, or all of them? A citation might help here to clear up why this method of identifying digraphs was used.

Thank you we have added the following:

Within the programme the 42 sounds of the English language are taught independently, at a pace of one sound per day. This is alongside the skills of letter formation, blending and segmenting, followed by ‘tricky words’ and 17 digraphs. There are various child-centered and multi-sensory activities for teaching these different skills including storytelling, songs and actions for each sound.

 Results:

• What is meant by “the disturbance in L1 and L2 word scores?”

When carrying out structural equation modelling every endogenous variable has a ‘disturbance’ term, these represent the residual (unexplained) variation. This is a standard way of describing error terms (see Kline, 2016, page 130).

• What is meant by “English word” and “Hausa word?” This reiterates the confusion in the abstract that was identified above. I think this is a simple fix that involves spelling out exactly what your variable is.

We have put in the abstract as well as in the methodology:

The English letter sound knowledge test assessed the pupil’s ability to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) for 41 different graphemes, including 17 diagraphs based on the accepted English sounds and their most common grapheme representations. The English word reading test (word) was the 2019 version of the UK Government’s “Phonics Screening Check”. This test assesses the pupil’s ability to read 20 invented decodable words, such as “yad”, and 20 real decodable words, such as “plug”. Decodable means that they do not have any irregularities in their spelling, and so follow the standard sound system.

• There appears to be a formatting quirk on page 7 where only two lines of text are shown.

Yes, this seems to have happened in the editing process and we have pulled the text up.

• What specific type of regression is used here in the multilevel modelling?

Multilevel modelling is a form of multilevel mixed-effects linear regression, however Multilevel modelling is a term used in statistics without specifying the type of linear regression.

• “In these data, there are three levels with individual pupils grouped into school attended, those schools grouped within states.” I find this a bit hard to parse. Would you be willing to explain these levels more precisely, perhaps with a sentence describing each one?

We say in section 4.3: The multilevel model has three levels (i) State (11 in total) (ii) School (488 in total) (iii) Pupil (2,328 in total)

Please also see the methods section where we say:

Data were gathered between June and August 2021 with 2,328 grade 3 primary school children. These children were attending 488 government primary schools in 11 states.

• On page 9, the authors state that only a very small portion of the variance is due to the school. While there have been adequate theoretical explanations, it is unclear why geography would affect data here. While there are many possible reasons – some areas may experience higher poverty than others – this should be presented and drawn out in the literature review.

In the paper we state that around a third of the variance is due to the school which isn’t a very small portion of the variance. The small portion of the variance is at the state level. This shows that schools are different in some way and NOT owing to the state they are situated in. This may not necessarily be due to poverty; further research would be needed to understand what was going on here.

• “That is L1 word score is a predictor of L2 word score (β=0.545, p<0.001) and L2 word score predicts L1 word score (β=0.200, p<0.001).” This sentence is clearer to me than the one that comes before it, so I would replace the previous sentence with this one.

We feel we need to keep in the sentence before that as our whole hypothesis is around bidirectionality.

• The article concludes with sentences about the importance of language in cultural heritage and identity. I believe that this point needs to be more salient throughout the article, from the very beginning. It underscores the importance of learning Hausa and English in the first place.

Yes, we totally agree with you and have also added this in the new introduction.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is the second review of the paper “An investigation of the cross-language transfer of reading skills: Evidence from a study in Nigerian Government Primary Schools”. Some comments were addressed, however, I still see two issues which prevent the manuscript from publication in its current form.

In the response, the authors say that their study does not investigate transfer (“Our study does not have any data on transfer and hence this is not the focus on our paper”), but the introduction states that “this study sets out to investigate the cross-language transfer of reading skills in 488 government schools sited in 11 north Nigerian states.” Besides, the authors state in the response: “we have not focused on this in our literature review”, but the first section is titled cross linguistic transfer. How these two claims should be reconciled? The authors should make the goals and the interpretation of the data clear. My comment in review 1 was that you call the section transfer and mention the theory which can explain transfer, but transfer was not sufficiently addressed in the the empirical studies reviewed.

I still doubt that what the study called phonological awareness is indeed this construct, rather it looks like letter recognition. Naming letter sounds is not recognizing words’ phonological structure. What the authors measured was letter knowledge or maybe orthographic awareness. If phonological awareness was not measured in the study, any conclusions related to it in the discussion are unsupported.

 

 

 

Author Response

"Please see the attachment"

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf