Bilingualism in the development of phonological awareness skills: an integrative literature review

Abstract

Purpose: to verify the influence of bilingualism on the development of phonological awareness. Methods: this is an integrative literature review, built on the hypothesis of the relationship between bilingualism and its influence on the development of phonological skills in children. The construction was carried out in the databases: CAPES, Pubmed, Scielo, Eric, and LILACS, using the following free terms in Portuguese and English: bilingualism AND phonology, bilingualism AND phonological awareness and bilingualism AND phonological skills. The sample selection criteria were: a) scientific papers published in national and international journals with full text, free and available in the database; b) in English and Portuguese; c) that addressed the theme in the last five years. For the selection of the papers, reading the title, followed by the summary, and finally, reading the papers potentially relevant for review were considered. Results: following the eligibility criteria, 2,578 papers were identified. Of these, 87 were selected for complete analysis. The final sample consisted of eight papers, two of them being written by Brazilian authors. Of these, five showed better phonological awareness skills in bilinguals and two in monolinguals. Studies point out that age can be a predictor of language skills and better phonological awareness skills associated with good reading development. Bilinguals, early exposed to this skill, develop reading by phonology and those with late exposition, by semantics. Conclusion: the present study demonstrated that there are still controversies regarding the impacts of bilingualism on phonological awareness, including on the benefits of phonological awareness.