1. A Probe into Lexical Depth: What is
the Direction of Transfer for L1
Literacy and L2 Development?
Seth Stroud
Article written by Parto Pajoohesh

2. In this study, Parto Pajoohesh (2007) argues that deep lexical
knowledge is a key factor in determining a student’s success in
schooling, especially when the school language is different from
the home language of a child. He argues that lack of breadth and
depth of vocabulary knowledge is a key factor in poor reading
comprehension and overall academic performance. The author lists
six aspects of DEEP lexical knowledge:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Morphological structure
phonological/orthographic representation
Syntactic properties
Possible collocations
Pragmatic rules
Semantic representation

3. Within the context of the study, the writer identifies
several factors that affect L1/HL transfer to L2 lexical
knowledge (and the possibility of L2 to L1 transfer
affected by schooling):
• Literacy and schooling experience in L1/HL
• School/learning experiences in the L2 (how complex and demanding they are
and what types of instruction are given)
• Length of residence in the L2 environment

4. To examine transfer between L1/HL and L2 lexical knowledge, the writer looked
specifically at how two groups of Farsi-English bilingual children displayed their
knowledge of lexical depth in Farsi and English. In the study, the performance
of the two groups on English lexical tasks were compared to a monolingual
English-speaking group. The two groups of Farsi speakers were characterized as
follows:
• one had a solid foundation in L1 through content based schooling (several
years of formal schooling in Farsi in their home country of Iran or several
years of formal schooling in Farsi at private institutions in Toronto)
• the other group had basic HL literacy skills (through a heritage language
program in Toronto that met for 3 hours once each week), more schooling
experience in the L2, and longer residency where the L2 was predominantly
used (the length of residencies ranged from 3 to 11 years)

5. Cummin’s (1991) theory of linguistic
interdependency frames the study. Pajoohesh
notes that the theory states:
• “that L1 and L2 decontextualized (literacy-based) aspects of
language proficiency are interrelated, in that academic skills
developed/learned in one language, and with a solid base,
transfer to the other language.”

6. In applying the theory of linguistic interdependency, as
well as considering the role of L1 schooling and L2
instruction, schooling experience and length of residence,
Pajoohesh predicted that:
• “bilinguals with content-based schooling in L1 would transfer
the already acquired decontextualized knowledge from L1 to L2
at least for the recognition test [to test student’s knowledge of
semantic relationships between words], compared to the other
bilinguals with more schooling in L2 and monolingual peers. At
the same time, bilinguals with more schooling in L2 and a longer
period of residence were expected to perform as well as
monolingual peers on the English tests [one test to show
semantic relationships and another test to evaluate a student’s
ability to express definitions]. They are also expected to transfer
the knowledge from L2 to L1 on the Farsi tasks.”

7. Results of the Study
•
In general, the HL speakers who had longer residency combined with explicit contentbased schooling performed equally as well as their monolingual peers on both English
tests (the WAT, which tested the students’ ability to show semantic associations
between words and the WDT, which tested the students’ ability to express definitions
by looking at quality of syntax and quality of meaning)
•
However, for the group with limited residency but several years of formal schooling in
the L1 (Farsi), they performed equally as well as both other groups (the HL group with
longer residency and the monolingual group of English speakers) on the basic word
associations test, but performed much lower on WDT. The showed clear abilities to
transfer basic syntactical elements of definitions from the L1 (“A mouth is a thing on
the face”), but they performed much lower on the quality of the associations in
definitions (“A mouth is a thing on the face” as opposed to “A mouth is a part of the
body used to eat food and speak”). This suggests that formal schooling in the L1 helps
transfer some expressible aspects of formal definitions, but explicit L2 instruction is
needed to improve the quality of word associations in the L2.

8. Implications
In his concluding remarks, Pajoohesh insists that:
“the present findings do not support the myth about the negative role of L1 that a home language
different from the language of instruction will pose difficulty for children at school. All Farsispeaking children have mentioned in the questionnaires that they spoke and were spoken to in Farsi in
the home at all times. The BHL children’s performance, which matched the monolinguals’
performance, contradicts the view of the negative effect of L1 as home language on school-task
performance. For BCB children [those with formal schooling but limited residency or exposure to L2
instruction], performance correlates more to length of L2 exposure than to L1 as home language.”
Moreover,…
“While children may know a word, they may not be able to use or produce it in all its conceptual
aspects. As the results of this investigation show, even by controlling for English proficiency, some
differences were found in each group’s deep lexical knowledge. This clearly demonstrates that deep
lexical knowledge, as an underlying aspect, is not always immediately perceptible. Therefore, in terms
of pedagogy, there is a need to incorporate various features of the deep lexical knowledge (e.g.,
semantic hierarchies, paradigmatic relations, and collocations) into vocabulary instruction.”