Journal #3

Do you think L1 reading skills transferred to L2 readin skills? How about your case?

I think L1 reading skills transferred to L2 reading skills. I think that someone who can not read in their first language is not good at reading in second language. The reason why I think like that is that L2 reading is affected by L1 reading strategies. Reading is a receptive skill so reading is not just decode the letter; it means that it is required strategies to read. In the case of L2 reading, the learners already have the knowledge of their L1 and they know how to read in their L1 so it naturally affects their L2 reading.
In my case, I practiced some reading strategies in L1 like finding main idea, guessing the meaning through the context, and etc to prepare for a univertity entrance exam. Before I practiced these kinds of strategies in L1 (When I was a middle school student), I used bottom-up approach in L2 reading so I decoded every single word and tried to identify what are subjects and verbs. Also I had difficulties to find main ideas in L2 reading. However, after I was able to use the strategies in L1, it was much easier for me to find main ideas and to guess unknown lexical items through the context in L2.