Struggling with L2 alphabet: The role of proficiency in orthographic learning

The present study examined the process of L2 orthographic learning in bilinguals with distant L1–L2 orthographies. Chinese–English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were trained with novel L2 words during a reading task. In contrast to higher proficient learners, those with lower L2 proficiency exhibited increased effects of length, frequency, and lexicality across exposures and at-chance recognition of trained words. Importantly, an additional post-training task assessing the lexical integration of trained words evidenced the engagement in different L1–L2 reading strategies across different levels of L2 proficiency, hence suggesting the L1 holistic processing at the base …