Cross-lag analysis of early reading and spelling development for bilinguals learning English and Asian scripts

How Do Word Reading and Word Spelling Develop Over Time? A Three‐Year Longitudinal Study of Hong Kong Chinese–English Bilingual Children

“…It is worth mentioning that the results of the Tamil‐English group for the O'Brien et al (2020) study were similar to those of the Chinese–English group; in contrast, the results of the Malay–English group were different from those of the other two groups in this study. Researchers attributed these findings to the different features of these three Asian languages and scripts (O'Brien et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, the nature of the additional language/script being learned affects the reading–spelling relationship in English. However, the participants in the O'Brien et al (2020) study were very young, reflecting evidence primarily on only the beginning of biscriptal literacy learning. Indeed, at the end of their third wave of testing, children were just entering primary school.…”

“…Overall, the developmental relationship between word reading and spelling probably depends very much on the features of orthographies (Schaars et al, 2017) as well as children's development. As far as we know, there seems to have been only one study that explored the reading–spelling relation in two scripts within the same sample (O'Brien et al, 2020). This longitudinal study included three groups of Singaporean children who were learning English, in addition to an Asian script (Chinese, Malay, or Tamil).…”

“…This longitudinal study included three groups of Singaporean children who were learning English, in addition to an Asian script (Chinese, Malay, or Tamil). Children in the study by O'Brien et al (2020) were evaluated on their reading and spelling skills of both scripts at their first year of kindergarten (K1, mean age = 5.3 years), their second year of kindergarten (K2, mean age = 5.8 years), and their first year of primary school (P1, mean age = 6.7 years). As the focus of their study was examining the similarities and differences on the reading–spelling relations across different scripts, they did not include other cognitive‐linguistic skills in that study.…”

“…Researchers attributed these findings to the different features of these three Asian languages and scripts (O'Brien et al, 2020). According to O'Brien et al (2020), Malay is a transparent alphabetic orthography characterized by highly regular letter‐to‐phoneme mappings, and Tamil is an alphasyllabary orthography that represents sound at the syllable level and contains complex features to indicate phonetic information. This study suggests that reading–spelling relationships vary depending on the orthographic depth and consistency of particular scripts.…”