Swain (1983) points out that the skills most basic to academic progress and
achievement, such as the ability to master speech as a symbolic system, to
generalize and abstract, are most easily learnt in Ll. As these skills are
cross-lingual, they can easily be applied to L2 as well. Thus it is easier to
learn to read in L1 and then to apply this skill to L2 than to learn to read and
learn L2 simultaneously. Once the reading skill is automated through Ll,
more attention can be paid to the acquisition of L2.