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This cross-sectional study examines the importance of English phonological and orthographic processing skills to English word reading and spelling in 3 groups of younger (8 -9 years) and older (11-12 years) children from different language backgrounds: English monolingual, English first language (LI)-Mandarin second language (L2), and Mandarin Ll-English L2. Results showed that performance on tasks of English phonological and orthographic processing was dependent on age and language back ground status. Both English monolingual and English-Ll children had better phonological processing skills compared to the Mandarin-Ll children, while the younger bilingual children had better ortho graphic processing skills compared to the English monolingual children. Separate regression analyses found that different skills contributed to English word reading and spelling for each language background group and within each age group. Orthographic processing was the only significant predictor of word reading and spelling for the English monolingual children. In contrast, phonological processing skills were important for word reading for the bilingual children and for spelling for the younger bilingual children. Though the predictors of word reading remained the same across age groups for all language groups, the predictors of spelling were different between the younger and older bilingual children. These findings support previous research on the influence of bilingual children's early linguistic experience on L2 English literacy acquisition and question whether bilingual children follow similar stages to learning English as English monolinguals. Educational implications for bilingual learners are discussed.

RationalePhonological awareness, letter knowledge, oral language (including sentence recall) and rapid automatised naming are acknowledged within-child predictors of literacy development. Separate research has identified family factors including socio-economic status, parents’ level of education and family history. However, both approaches have left unexplained significant amounts of variance in literacy outcomes. This longitudinal study sought to improve prospective classification accuracy for young children at risk of literacy failure by adding two new family measures (parents’ phonological awareness and parents’ perceived self-efficacy), and then combining the within-child and family factors.MethodPre-literacy skills were measured in 102 four year olds (46 girls and 56 boys) at the beginning of Preschool, and then at the beginning and end of Kindergarten, when rapid automatised naming was also measured. Family factors data were collected at the beginning of Preschool, and children’s literacy outcomes were measured at the end of Year 1 (age 6–7 years).ResultsChildren from high-risk backgrounds showed poorer literacy outcomes than low-risk students, though three family factors (school socio-economic status, parents’ phonological awareness, and family history) typically accounted for less Year 1 variance than the within-child factors. Combining these family factors with the end of Kindergarten within-child factors provided the most accurate classification (i.e., sensitivity = .85; specificity = .90; overall correct = .88).ImplicationsOur approach would identify at-risk children for intervention before they began to fail. Moreover, it would be cost-effective because although few at-risk children would be missed, allocation of unnecessary educational resources would be minimised.

Developing spelling skills in English is a particularly demanding task for Chinese speakers because, unlike many other bilinguals leaming English as a second language, they must leam two languages with different orthography as well as phonology. To disentangle socioeconomic and pedagogical factors from the underlying cognitive-linguistic processes that predict the development of spelling, we used a 6-month longitudinal design and compared children with English as their first language (English-Ll; n = 50) and children with Mandarin as their first language (Mandarin-Ll; n = 50) from the same kindergarten. Both groups were tested on parallel versions of English and Mandarin tasks as predictors at Time 1, and their spelling sophistication scores were then computed from a 52-item experimental task administered at Time 2. After we controlled for nonverbal IQ, age, vocabulary, and spelling achievement on Wide Range Achievement Test 4 at Time 1, regression analyses showed that phoneme awareness was the strongest predictor of spelling sophistication for English-Ll children, but syllable awareness and letter-sound knowledge were also important for Mandarin-Ll children. The implications of these differences in the cognitive-linguistic processing of bilingual children leaming two dissimilar languages are briefly discussed.