Are there developmental patterns in emergent bilingual children’s English letter-name knowledge?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore five developmental patterns of English letter-name knowledge for emergent bilingual children. We considered five patterns demonstrated by English monolingual children: visual similarity effect, uppercase familiarity effect, first name/first initial effects, consonant-order effect, and frequency effect. We assessed the English uppercase and lowercase letter-name knowledge of 56 emergent bilingual children enrolled in US classrooms. Results from logistic multilevel regression modeling showed that emergent bilingual children exhibited the uppercase familiarity effect, but other patterns differed. Children whose additional languages used a Latin-based alphabetic orthography were less likely to know the names of lowercase letters compared to children whose additional languages used a non-alphabetic orthography. For children whose additional languages involved a Latin-based alphabetic orthography, children were more likely to know the names of uppercase letters that were more visually similar to letters from children’s additional languages. We did not find any evidence that emergent bilingual children exhibited the first name/first initial, consonant-order, or frequency effects. Our findings suggest that we need to consider these differences and associated implications for alphabet instruction when working with emergent bilingual children.