Innovation in Language Learning

Evidence in language processing suggests that when bilingual individuals read in one language their other language is activated automatically. Most of the research has looked at European bilinguals (e.g., Kroll and Hermans, in press; Rastle & Davis, 2008). Cross language lexical activation between words in structurally different language (e.g., English with Chinese, Hebrew or Japanese) has been barely explored. The focus of this research is visual word processing in Arabic-English Bilinguals. These languages come from different families (Semitic/Indo-European). The participants were investigated to find the effects of morphological structure in bilingual word reading. Arabic words likewise English words, are systematically parsed to roots and word patterns but English roots and affixes combine concatenatively (e.g., read + ing) whereas Arabic morphology is non concatenative, with tri-consonantly roots filled with vowel-based affixes. The initial experimental question was asked whether probe relationship between L1 and L2 lexicons in Arabic & English bilinguals. Using languages with different scripts and morphological structures to investigate lexical activation in the bilingual lexicon. Amis of this study were to replicate the effect of translation priming shown in languages with different scripts (Not yet been shown in Arabic). To look for effect of morphological and semantic relationships between the words in each language. Does the morphological organisation of L1 have an effect on processing in L2?

Three experiments, were used masked priming with Arabic–English bilinguals in which we measured lexical decision responses to English target words following Arabic primes. The prime durations were (50ms, 80ms and 200ms) involving 60- 70 participants in each SOA. There was no effect of primes with only a morphological relationship to the translation word. So, there is only evidence of an effect of a semantic relationship between prime and target. No real evidence in L1 mediating lexical access. This may be because normally my bilinguals have high L2 proficiency. So, translation is observed early and purely semantic priming comes later.