Bilingualism, writing, and metalinguistic awareness: Oral–literate interactions between first and second languages

Abstract

This article reports on an investigation of the development of literacy, bilingualism, and metalinguistic awareness. The particular context of the study (high levels of bilingualism among school-age children) and the particular language contact situation (an indigenous language) offer a vantage point on the interaction between language learning and metalinguistic awareness and take into account the sociolinguistic imbalances that characterize bilingual communities of this type. The subjects who participated in the study were speakers of Spanish and Náhuatl from Central Mexico. Assessments of metalinguistic awareness related to different aspects of the children's consciousness of the languages they spoke or understood were compared to a series of assessments of reading comprehension, writing, and oral narrative in both languages. Findings suggest directions for further research along the following lines: metalinguistic awareness is related to different aspects of literacy development in different ways, the key variables being the degree of decontextualization and expressive versus receptive language tasks.

Acquisition of Literacy in Bilingual Children: A Framework for Research

“…Metalinguistic notions of structure, word, and sound underlie children's ability to become literate (reviewed by Adams, 1990). Francis (1999) extended this research by examining some of the complexities of these relationships for bilingual children, noting how bilingualism modulates the effect that metalinguistic awareness brings to literacy acquisition. Although no simple conclusions followed, he argued that specific aspects of metalinguistic awareness in one of the languages influenced reading comprehension in the other for bilingual children.…”

Early executive function: The influence of culture and bilingualism

“…See Table 1 for processes associated with each EF task employed in the present study. These overlapping cognitive processes are also relevant to the way bilingual children learn and process two languages at the same time (Bialystok, 2001), where co-activation of two languages in the bilingual brain is required for successful language comprehension and production (Bialystok, 2017;Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007;Brysbaert, 1998;Francis, 1999;Gollan & Kroll, 2001;Guttentag, Haith, Goodman & Hauch, 1984;Kroll & Dijkstra, 2002;Smith, 1997). Thus, language processing and selection taps into a general executive system for successful switching between two different languages, that requires selective attention to the relevant language and inhibition of the non-relevant language (Bialystok, 2017;Bialystok & Martin, 2004;Kroll & Bialystok, 2013).…”

Language awareness and language learning

“…It concludes that LA literacy work needs to take children's metacognitive development into account, and points out the need for research in a range of linguistic and cultural contexts. Francis (1999Francis ( , 2002 studied the metalinguistic awareness of Náhuatl/Spanish bilingual children in Mexico, and its relationship to literacy development. The ability to discriminate between two language codes, and to separate them, seemed to be linked to development of reflective, metalinguistic ability.…”