Development of copying skills in L2 adult English learners with emergent print literacy

Situated at a Northern California adult school, this study offers insight into the developmental process of adult emergent print literacy development in an L2 context, with specific attention to the earliest stages. Focused on four adult students each having 0?1 year of formal L1 education, the researcher documented instances of copying classroom text over a 5-month period. In alignment with children?s orthographic development, the findings indicate that adults new to writing may also progress along a similar trajectory of written shape production, relying on both motor skill development and the subsequent integration of a perceptual-motor component. Moreover, these learners demonstrated varying levels of attunement to orthographic features of text, including letter count and sequence, word segmentation, and adherence to semiotic norms of paper orientation, lines, and margins. The variance between the participants resulted in varying learner starting points depending on which skills students had previously acquired or been exposed to. Consequently, practitioners should not make any assumptions about the skills incoming students already possess; additionally, practitioners must be conscious of the varying cognitive demands entailed within a simple copying task given the myriad of novel skills entailed.