Effects of bilingualism and biliteracy on children's emerging concepts of print.

Abstract

Three groups of 4- and 5-year-old children were examined for their concepts of how print refers to language. All of the children could identify printed letters and their sounds but not read alone. The groups studied were monolingual speakers of English, bilingual speakers of French and English, and bilingual speakers of Chinese (Mandarin) and English. Bilingual children were equally proficient in both languages and were familiar with print and storybooks in both languages. The tasks assessed children's understanding of the general correspondence between print and language in which the printed form represents a word and the specific correspondence between a constituent of print and one of language that determines representation in a given writing system. The general correspondence relation applies to all writing systems, but the specific correspondence relation changes for different kinds of writing systems. Bilingual children understood better than monolingual children the general symbolic representation of print. The older Chinese-English bilingual children also showed advanced understanding of the specific correspondence relations in English print.

Do Bilinguals Activate Phonological Representations in One or Both of Their Languages When Naming Words?

“…This is likely to be a greater problem when a bilingual's two languages share many word bodies that are pronounced differently in the two languages. These results, in combination with those of Bialystok and her colleagues (e.g., Bialystok, 1997;Bialystok & Shilpi, 1998) which show that bilingual children derive impressive cognitive benefits from their bilingualism, should help allay parents' concerns regarding intensive second-language instructional programs for their children.…”

Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

“…Many monolingual English-speaking 4-year-olds reported as if they believed the word on the card changed to correspond to the object it was beside. Bialystok (1997) conceptualized this result as possibly an attentional problem; children must focus on textual features and not be distracted by conflicting information from the position of the name card next to the wrong object. Clearly, there are potential correspondences between this attentional account and the present suggestion that 4-year-olds might have difficulty in simultaneously apprehending a symbol both as a representation of something else and as an entity in its own right.…”

“…Using a "moving word" task, Bialystok (1997) showed children a card with a word printed on it which was then placed next to the named object. Children were asked to say what the word said both when it was in its correct position and after it had "accidentally" been moved so that it was next to a different object.…”

La repercusión del bilingüismo en el rendimiento académico en alumnos de colegios públicos de la Comunidad de Madrid

“…Además del estudio citado anteriormente de Turnbull, Hart y Lapkin (2003) que señalaba la superioridad en la lectura de los sujetos bilingües sobre los monolingües, otras investigaciones han obtenido resultados similares. Así, Bialystok (1997), D'Angiulli, Siegel y Serra (2001), Demont (2001) y Kimbrough Oller y Cobo-Lewis (2002) obtuvieron resultados superiores por parte de los alumnos bilingües en distintas habilidades lectoras. Ricciardelli (1993) halló que los alumnos bilingües que demostraron alta competencia en las dos lenguas alcanzaron unas puntuaciones más altas en pruebas de rendimiento en lectura.…”