Reading in a Second Language: Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Issues

Reading in a Second Language offers a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon and process of reading in a second language, with graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and applied psychology as its primary audience. The book explores reading processes from a number of complementary standpoints, integrating perspectives from fields such as first and second language reading, second language acquisition, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience. The first half examines major factors in second language reading: types of scripts, the cognitive and neural substrates of reading; metalinguistic awareness, word recognition, language transfer, and lexical knowledge. The second part of the book discusses the social and educational contexts in which reading development occurs, including issues related to pedagogy, the use of technology in the classroom, reading disorders, and policy making. Reading in a Second Language provides students with a full, logically organized overview of the primary factors that shape reading development and processes in a second language.

Xi Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto. Her research specializes in the language and literacy development of bilingual and English Language Learners.

Vedran Dronjic is an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches in the doctoral program in Second Language Acquisition. His research focuses on the cognitive underpinnings of language knowledge and performance, particularly morphology, the mental lexicon, and reading.

Rena Helms-Park is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto Scarborough, where she teaches in the Psycholinguistics Specialist program. Her research interests lie in lexical acquisition and cross-linguistic influence.