Acquisition of Literacy in Bilingual Children: A Framework for Research

Abstract

Much research that contributes to understanding how bilingual children become literate cannot isolate the contribution of bilingualism itself to the discussion of literacy acquisition for these children. This paper identifies three areas of research relevant to examining literacy acquisition in bilinguals, explains the contribution of each, and associates each with a skill required by monolingual children in becoming literate. A review of the literature explores differences between bilingual and monolingual children in the development of literacy acquisition skills. The relation between bilingualism and the development of each of the three skills is different, sometimes indicating an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage for bilingual children. Bilingualism clearly affects children's development of literacy, but its effect is neither simple nor unitary.For almost a century, there has been a small but consistent research interest in the possible implications that bilingualism might have on children's cognitive and intellectual development (reviewed by Hakuta, 1986). Much of this research was conducted in schools, using school-type measures of achievement (e.g., Macnamara, 1966) and often including standardized IQ testing (e.g.,

Promoting Language and Literacy in Young Dual Language Learners: Research, Practice, and Policy

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The development of secondary discourse ability and metalinguistic awareness in second language learners

“…Wang, Koda and Perfetti (2003), in a study of Korean and Chinese English-language learners, showed how differences in students' L1 orthography (alphabetic and morpho-syllabic, in this case) impact on L2 decoding strategies. In this regard, examples of "strategy transfer" (Rickard Liow 1999: 209) point to language-specific, scriptdependent factors that deserve further investigation (Bialystok 2002). For example, in bilingual literacy-learning situations in which a new orthography may be proposed for initial reading instruction in an indigenous language with no available standardized orthography, how closely should the new writing system adhere to the standard system of the national language (to facilitate "strategy transfer")?…”

Neuropsychological effects of second language exposure in Down syndrome

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