Although we observed significant correlations between insular volume or surface asymmetries and functional lateralization of gesture and language, correlations never imply causation.
How does this cross-language correlation come about?
As children develop their L2 skills, they are more able to directly access the meanings of L2 words, hence the use of L1 words as a mediation will gradually diminish (Sheng et al., 2013), thereby the cross-language correlation also decreases.
Specifically, learners who were receiving L1 and L2 instruction at schools showed stronger cross-language correlations in the domain of decoding than learners who were receiving L2 only instruction.
We hypothesize that cross-language correlations, if any, would be moderated by two factors: the learning context embedded in three different geographic locations (Hong Kong/Singapore; Mainland China/Taiwan; US/Canada), and grade levels.
With regard to the effect of grade level, based on the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll et al., 2010), we expect that in the early phases of L2 acquisition, learners may rely more on their L1 skills hence greater cross-language correlations in lower grade levels.
In order to estimate the relationship between the observations of the performance on the tests and the target domain of English language, Pearson correlation was utilized and estimated.
Thus, whereas within-language corpora correlations are strong for both languages, the Web corpora appear to better correlate across languages, indicating that they are utilizing similar text resources as the basis for the frequencies.
The new method of mapping the stories through common languages and geographical proximity worked, "because in oral tradition, folk tales are transmitted through spoken language, so a correlation might be expected; and also because both languages and folk tales are transmitted from generation to generation".
In order to estimate the relationship between the observations of performance on the tests and observed test scores and if these scores are reflective of intended academic language abilities, Pearson correlation was utilized and estimated.
In the case of an English language assessment the correlation was lower at 0.74 and a two-factor model provided a better fit.
