Bilingual advantage? Literacy and phonological awareness in Polish-speaking early elementary school children learning English simultaneously

Abstract

In most studies, paired bilingual programs turned out to be more effective in L2 (usually English) literacy acquisition than other types of programs. L1 reading proficiency was shown to foster second language reading acquisition across many languages. However, little is known about L1 reading acquisition in bilingual programs. The study examines the effect of a paired-bilingual education program conducted in Polish (L1) and English (L2) on word reading fluency in Polish as L1 after an average of 1 and 2.5 years of literacy training. 61 Polish children obtaining Polish-only literacy training and 54 children obtaining the paired-bilingual Polish-English literacy training completed word and pseudoword reading and onset-rhyme (rhyme production) and phoneme awareness (phoneme deletion and phonemic differentiation) tasks in Polish. Also Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and English (L2) word fluency were tested. A strong main effect of the literacy level was observed, pointing to a progressive tendency in reading efficiency in both groups of children. Moreover, a significant interaction between the group and literacy level was documented. Beginner readers (after one year of literacy instruction) from the monolingual literacy group showed a higher word reading proficiency than students from the paired-bilingual. However, after two and a half years of literacy training children from the paired-bilingual group achieved significantly higher results in Polish word reading than their peers from the monolingual group. Phonological awareness predicted reading fluency in both groups, but no significant differences between the groups were found suggesting other predictors to be responsible for the bilingual group’s advantage.