‘All children have a skateboards’. Differences between the grammaticality of reading mistakes of monolingual and bilingual elementary school children

Abstract

ABSTRACT Linguistic abilities are vital for reading. Due to the complementary principle, arbitrary and partly rule-governed linguistic knowledge and structures are more challenging for bilingual than monolingual children. It is conceivable that this difference also influences the reading process of bilingual children and leads to different types of mistakes made while reading compared to monolingual children. The present study explores potential differences between bilingual Turkish-German and monolingual German students from grades three and four in elementary school (n = 87) in regard to the grammaticality of reading mistakes while reading aloud. Using secondary data, bilingual students were matched pairwise to the monolingual students on the basis of oral reading fluency to ensure equal reading abilities before surface features and grammaticality of reading mistakes were analysed with an adaptation of Reading Miscue Analysis. MANOVAs comparing Turkish-German bilingual and German monolingual students indicate significant differences concerning the grammaticality of mistakes made: Monolinguals produced more reading mistakes preserving grammaticality, while bilinguals produced more mistakes violating grammaticality. Moreover, post-hoc tests showed that both groups differ significantly in omissions leading to mistakes preserving or violating grammaticality. Potential causes for these differences as well as the adequacy of the adaptation of Reading Miscue Analysis will be discussed.