Study’s results

The theoretical background and previous research have shown that both L2 vocabulary knowledge and L1 reading comprehension are important predictors of L2 reading

comprehension and that there is cross-linguistic transfer between L1 and L2. There is not yet an agreement though, on whether this transfer occurs from the beginning or there has to be a certain level of L2 proficiency acquired before the transfer occurs. In this section the results of the study will be discussed in light of the earlier presented theory. First the relationship between L2 reading comprehension with L2 vocabulary knowledge and L1 reading comprehension will be discussed. Then, to what extend the results of the hierarchical regression analysis support the existing theory about cross-linguistic transfer will be discussed.

The relationship between L2 reading comprehension, L2 vocabulary knowledge and L1 reading comprehension

The results of this study have shown that Norwegians have a not as high level of proficiency in English, as it was supported by Brevik et al. (2016). L2 reading comprehension test had a mean score of 0.66, vocabulary size test 51.8 and the lexical decision test 75.6. This result means that they do have a good level of English proficiency, though not very high. However, this is in line with the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002) which claims that reading skill is supported by the reader’s high quality of a word representation which means its orthography, phonology and semantics. So, the good performance in the L2 reading comprehension test is supported by the good performance in the two L2 vocabulary tests.

45 The correlation of L2 reading comprehension and L2 vocabulary knowledge was high. The correlation between L2 reading comprehension and the vocabulary size test was ρ=0.51 and between L2 reading comprehension and LexTale ρ=0.37, which is a strong enough

correlation because in educational research it cannot be expected to have higher correlations than between 0.20 and 0.40 between variables (Gall et al, 2007). This finding is in line with the findings of many studies that support that L2 vocabulary plays an important role in L2 reading comprehension (Raudszus et al., 2019; Yamashita & Shiotsu, 2017; O’Connor et al., 2019; Schaars et al., 2019; Verhoeven, Voeten & Vermeer, 2019), especially among adults (Jeon & Yamashita, 2014; Raudszus et al., 2018). L1 reading comprehension correlates strongly with L2 reading comprehension (ρ=0.56) as well. This is in line with other research findings about their relationship that support that the two variables correlate strongly (Brevik et al., 2016).

L2 vocabulary knowledge accounted for 14.8% of the L2 reading comprehension which also is in line with the Reading Systems Framework (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014) which supports that lexical knowledge is a prime predictor of reading comprehension because of its critical role in word-to-text integration process.

Results about cross-linguistic transfer

According to the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis (Cummins, 1979), proficiency acquired in L1 can transfer or facilitate learning in L2. L1 and L2 are interdependent and depend on common underlying proficiency, so the hypothesis is that skilled readers in L1 will also read well in L2. This study’s findings support that hypothesis. Performance in both L1 and L2 reading comprehension tests was very good (L1 reading comprehension test had a mean score of 0.72 and L2 reading comprehension test 0.66) and L1 reading comprehension accounted for 36.4% of the variance of L2 reading comprehension. Thus, the findings suggest that the participants were skilled in both L1 and L2 reading and there was transfer of skills from L1 to L2.

However, the findings seem to also support the Linguistic Threshold Hypothesis (Cummins, 1979) which states that L1 skills transfer to L2 only when a certain level of L2 language proficiency has been acquired. In this study L2 vocabulary knowledge accounted for 14.8%

of L2 reading comprehension. Thus, there was transfer of skills between L1 and L2 reading comprehension while L2 vocabulary knowledge was high (mean score of 51.8 and 75.6) and

46 played a significant role in the prediction of L2 reading comprehension. This is not enough evidence though, to conclude that the transfer occurs due to the high level of L2 proficiency.

It just supports the hypothesis that when there is such a level of L2 proficiency, L1 skills are transferred to L2. Thus, the study’s results do not conclude on whether transfer between the L1 and L2 reading comprehension occurs anyway or whether a good level of L2 language proficiency should first be acquired.

Furthermore, these findings seem to support Alderson’s (1984 in Yamashita & Shiotsu, 2017) and Jeon’s and Yamashita’s (2014) answer in the question of whether L2 reading is a reading problem or a language problem. The question is about whether L2 reading difficulties are better explained by limited L2 knowledge or by weak L1 reading ability. So, whether L2 knowledge or L1 reading ability is more important in L2 reading development. They suggest that it seems to be a matter of language, although it is still significantly a reading matter. In this study L2 reading comprehension was explained by both L1 reading comprehension and knowledge of L2 vocabulary which together accounted for 51.2% of the total variance. Thus, it seems to be both a language and a reading matter.

Finally, Bernhardt’s (2011) compensatory theory states that if the reader has a weakness in one area, it will be compensated for by knowledge from another area because of the transfer between L1 and L2. According to her model, L2 language knowledge accounts for up to 30%

of L2 reading comprehension and L1 literacy for up to 20%. In this study L2 vocabulary knowledge accounts for 14.8% of L2 reading comprehension. This is quite in line with Bernhardt’s model because vocabulary knowledge is just a part of L2 language knowledge and the remaining part could possibly account for the rest 15.2% of the proposed 30%. L1 literacy, according to her, accounts for up to 20% of L2 reading comprehension, but in this study, L1 reading comprehension, which is included in L1 literacy, accounts for 36.4%. This may be due to the close distance of the two languages. As mentioned earlier, Norwegian and English are both alphabetic languages of the same origin, they are Germanic languages and share a lot of cognates.

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