READING PROFICIENCY AND ORTHOGRAPHY - EVIDENCE FROM HEBREW AND ENGLISH

We conducted two experiments to test whether the orthography of reader s' first or second languages affects their reading time and comprehens ion in each. In both experiments, very skilled bilinguals read texts t ranslated from Hebrew to English, or from English to Hebrew. Half the texts were originally written in Hebrew and the other half in English. In the first experiment, 24 native Hebrew speakers read two passages of four texts in the Hebrew version. Each read one of the texts vowele d and the other one unvoweled. Twelve native English speakers read two passages from the same four texts in English. Participants in the stu dy were either students or teachers at the University of Haifa. The En glish native speakers read the English texts significantly faster than the native Hebrew speakers read the same texts in their Hebrew versio n. The origin of the text (English or Hebrew) and vowelization were no nsignificant, as was any interaction between the main factors. The com prehension of the Hebrew voweled texts was nearly significantly better than was the comprehension of the Hebrew unvoweled texts. In the seco nd experiment, 24 advanced bilingual, Hebrew native speakers read two passages in Hebrew (one voweled and the other unvoweled) and two in En glish. Again, the reading time in English was significantly shorter. P ost-hoc comparisons showed that reading time was shorter in English th an in unvoweled Hebrew, but not shorter than in voweled Hebrew. Compre hension of English was not significantly different from comprehension of voweled Hebrew, but was significantly better than comprehension of unvoweled Hebrew.