Bilingualism and early literacy in Dutch Caribbean kindergartners

Given the gap in knowledge on decoding development in post-colonial contexts, this longitudinal study examined Papiamento (Creole L1) and Dutch (postcolonial L2) decoding development from kindergarten to second grade of children in the Dutch Caribbean while considering order of initial decoding instruction (L1 or L2), kindergarten precursors (speech decoding, vocabulary, rapid naming, short-term memory, phonological awareness), and transfer effects. Results revealed that incase of L1 decoding instruction, the development of letter knowledge and decoding was higher in Papiamento and incase of L2 decoding instruction it was higher in Dutch. When instruction started in L1, Papiamento decoding development was statistically significantly predicted by phonological awareness and letter knowledge, and Dutch decoding development by letter knowledge only. When instruction started in L2, Dutch decoding development was statistically significantly predicted by phonological awareness, letter knowledge, short-term memory, and speech decoding, and Papiamento decoding development by letter knowledge and vocabulary. Transfer effects were found from the language of decoding instruction to the other language with L1 precursors significantly predicting L2, but not the other way around. To conclude, the results reveal the pivotal role and benefit of including the L1 in early bilingual decoding development in a postcolonial context.

<p>本研究旨在探討國小高年級識字障礙學生聲韻覺識、唸名速度和中英文識字的關係，聲韻覺識、唸名速度對英文識字的預測力，以驗證「語言譯錄差異假說」的理論。研究對象包括國小高年級識字障礙學生，及其同生理年齡和同識字能力之兩組一般學生，每組人數各30位、總計為90位學生。研究工具包括智力測驗、中英文聲韻覺識及唸名速度測驗，以及中英文識字測驗。經由共變數分析、F考驗與逐步迴歸分析，以釐清中英文聲韻覺識、唸名速度等識字基礎認知能力是否為影響英文識字的關鍵因素。結果如下：(1)在聲韻覺識方面，識字障礙組明顯落後於同生理年齡組學生，但與同識字能力組學生相當，故可能不是識字困難的因。(2)在唸名速度方面，識字障礙組不僅明顯落後於同生理年齡組學生，也落後於同識字能力組學生，故可能是識字困難的因。(3)無論是識字障礙組或同生理年齡組之一般學生，英文聲韻覺識和唸名速度都最是能預測英文識字表現的變項，故未完全支持語言譯錄差異假說。</p> <p> </p><p>Purpose </p> <p> In the study of dyslexia, many empirical studies have pointed out that phonological awareness and rapid naming tasks are the most effective in distinguishing good readers from weak readers, so they are widely used in the early screening of children with suspected learning disabilities. In view of this, this study lists phonological awareness and naming speed ability as the main basic literacy cognitive variables, and further explores the influence of phonological awareness and rapid naming on literacy ability. In the 1980s, Sparks, Ganschow and others began to conduct a series of studies on foreign language learning difficulties, and later they proposed the “Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis” (LCDH) to explain the problem of foreign language learning difficulties. They believe that when a learner has difficulty in learning a foreign language, it is because the language processing ability of the learner’s mother tongue is inherently problematic. Reading and writing ability of the mother tongue is the prerequisite ability for learning a foreign language, especially those skills involving symbol decoding and phonological processing. Chinese and English are two different writing systems. While English is alphabetic writing system, Chinese is logographic writing system. Does LCDH still work for Chinese-speaking Taiwanese children with dyslexia when they learn English? Or the difference in writing systems will not pose as an obstacle, and students with Chinese literacy disabilities can also learn English well? What key problems do students with Chinese literacy disabilities encounter in learning English? Does it stem from the pre-existing difficulties of the mother tongue itself? Is there a commonality between the native language and the foreign language? If the relationship between the two languages can be further clarified, then findings can provide suggestions for teachers to conduct remedial instruction and help students who are not good at learning their mother tongue. This study was aimed to test the LCDH. We examined the relations between reading-related cognitive skills (i.e., phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming) and word reading of Chinese children with dyslexia in their Chinese language (L1) and in English (L2). </p> <p> Methods </p> <p> A total of 90 children [30 with dyslexia (Ds), 30 chronological age (CA) controls, and 30 reading-level (RL) controls] participated in this study. The three groups were matched by IQ and SES. All children were administered measures of Chinese character list, English word reading, and rapid naming as well as phonological awareness tasks in both L1 and L2. Chinese phonological awareness tasks included initial sound detection, rime detection, and tone awareness. English phonological awareness tasks included initial sound deletion and sound sorting. Chinese rapid naming task was 5 Zhu-In-Fu-Hao symbols randomly presented 10 times. English rapid naming task was 5 alphabets randomly presented 10 times. Children were asked to name them as fast as possible. RL group refers to the control group whose chronological age is lower than the experimental group but has the same reading ability. It is assumed that the dyslexia group performs lower than the same chronological age control group in a certain cognitive ability, and is also worse than the same reading ability group. Then the researchers can speculate that the cognitive ability is not likely to be different due to the influence of reading ability, but may be the cause of the difference in reading performance. Therefore, participants of this study included the literacy disorder group in the upper grades of elementary school, the same chronological age group and the middle grade group with the same literacy ability, so as to clarify whether the basic cognitive ability of Chinese and English literacy is the key factor affecting English literacy. Three research questions were: (1) What were the differences of L1 and L2 phonological awareness performance in Ds, CA, and RL groups? (2) What were the differences of L1 and L2 rapid automatized naming performance in Ds, CA, and RL groups? (3) What were the predictive power of L1 and L2 phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming to the three groups learning English words? </p> <p> Results </p> <p> The major findings of this study were as follows: (1) Ds performed significantly lower than CA in all reading-related cognitive skills in Chinese. However, Ds also performed significantly lower than RL in rapid naming. To sum up, Chinese rapid naming may be the cause of Chinese character reading disability. (2) Ds performed significantly lower than CA in all reading-related cognitive skills in English. However, Ds also performed significantly lower than RL in rapid naming. To sum up, English rapid naming may be the cause of Chinese character reading disability. (3) There were significant correlations among phonological awareness (deletion), rapid naming and character reading in English; Chinese was not significantly correlated with English. Deletion and rapid naming were the best predictors of English character reading. </p> <p> Conclusions </p> <p> Children with dyslexia showed weaker performance than CA controls in both languages and had more difficulties in rapid naming than RL controls. Rapid naming rather than phonological awareness may be the cause of Chinese character reading disability. Reading-related cognitive skills in Chinese did not contribute significantly to the ability to read English words, suggesting little cross-linguistic transfer from L1 to L2. This result did not fully support the linguistic coding differences hypothesis. According to the findings, recommendations of this study for further studies and practical implementation included: (1) Rapid naming was critical to L1 and L2 word reading performance. It could be a powerful detective index in early diagnosing children with dyslexia. (2) Phonological awareness and rapid naming were important to English word learning. Teachers can spend more time in teaching phonological awareness and rapid naming when children with dyslexia start to learn English. (3) Children in middle grade have shown big differences in English word reading task (from 0 to full scores). Teachers should pay attention to these children with low English reading performance and provide remedial instruction as early as possible. (4) LCDH was not fully supported in this study. In the future, different groups can be involved, such as participants with various language learning experiences or education levels, to explore the possibilities of LCDH in different conditions. </p> <p> </p>

The current study investigated the relative contributions of auditory speech decoding (i.e., auditory discrimination) and visual speech decoding (i.e., speechreading) on phonological awareness and letter knowledge in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) kindergartners (Mage = 6;4, n = 27) and hearing kindergartners (Mage = 5;10, n = 42). Hearing children scored higher on auditory discrimination and phonological awareness, with the DHH children scoring at chance level for auditory discrimination, while no differences were found on speechreading and letter knowledge. For DHH children, speechreading correlated with phonological awareness and letter knowledge, for the hearing children, auditory discrimination correlated with phonological awareness. Two regression analyses showed that speechreading predicted phonological awareness and letter knowledge in DHH children only. Speechreading may thus be a compensatory factor in early literacy for DHH children, at least for those who are exposed to spoken language in monolingual or in bilingual or bimodal-bilingual contexts, and could be important to focus on during early literacy instruction.

Modeling individual variation in early literacy skills in kindergarten children with intellectual disabilities

Background: Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children may experience difficulties in word decoding development. Aims: We aimed to compare and predict the incremental word decoding development in first grade in Dutch DHH and hearing children, as a function of kindergarten reading precursors. Methods and procedures: In this study, 25 DHH, and 41 hearing children participated. Kindergarten measures were phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge (LK), rapid naming (RAN), and verbal short-term memory (VSTM). Word decoding (WD) was assessed at three consecutive time points (WD1, 2, 3) during reading instruction in first grade. Outcomes and results: The hearing children scored higher than the DHH children on PA and VSTM only, although the distribution of WD scores differed between the groups. At WD1, PA and RAN predicted WD efficiency in both groups; but PA was a stronger predictor for hearing children. At WD2, LK, RAN, and the autoregressor were predictors for both groups. While at WD3, only the autoregressor was a significant predictor. Conclusions and implications: WD development in DHH children on average shows similar levels as in hearing children, though within the DHH group more variation was observed. WD development in DHH children is not as much driven by PA; they may use other skills to compensate.

The relationships between phonological awareness, rapid naming, short term verbal memory, letter knowledge, visual skills and word reading in kindergarten, and the predictive patterns from kindergarten to first grade were examined in 41 Chinese-Dutch bilingual children living in the Netherlands in both their first language (Chinese) and second language (Dutch). In kindergarten, Chinese word reading was predicted by Chinese phonological awareness, and Dutch word reading was predicted by Dutch phonological awareness and letter knowledge. There was a robust autoregressive effect of word reading from kindergarten to first grade in both Chinese and Dutch. Follow-up mediation analyses further showed that both phonological awareness in Chinese and phonological awareness combined with letter knowledge in Dutch in kindergarten had an indirect effect on Grade 1 word reading via kindergarten word reading. Although cross-language correlation was found in word reading for bilingual children in kindergarten, Dutch word reading did not add to the prediction of Chinese word reading when Chinese precursor measures were taken into account.

Pleiotropic Effects of a Chromosome 3 Locus on Speech-Sound Disorder and Reading

The role of verbal working memory (VWM) in early language and literacy development among typical and atypical monolingual children exposed to different orthographies is well established. Less is known how English Language Learners (ELLs) allocate their VWM resources in early stages of literacy acquisition in English (L2). This study examined the role of phonological (PM) and working memory (WM) in L2 decoding, sight word recognition and spelling among ELLs attending kindergarten in an urban Title I school. The results of ELLs’ assessments across cognitive and linguistic reading pre-requisites were compared to the assessments on the same measures of typical and specific language impaired (SLI) monolingual peers. Despite decreased vocabulary and lower phonological awareness (PA) skills ELLs did not differ from typical monolingual peers on VWM skills and early literacy outcomes, but outperformed SLIs. However, ELLs relied exclusively on PM for decoding and spelling, which differed from typical monolingual peers. These results provide important information regarding L2 language and early literacy development among Spanish-speaking ELLs, and should help to conceptualize the educational strategies for supporting ELLs based on their L1 structure. Measure of PM may be discriminating criteria between ELLs and SLIs, as poor PM is an established marker for SLI.

Associations between receptive and expressive vocabulary and early literacy in young students with intellectual disabilities using AAC.

This study investigated the role of morphological awareness in understanding Chinese word reading and dictation among Chinese-speaking adolescent readers in Hong Kong as well as the cognitive-linguistic profile of early adolescent readers with dyslexia. Fifty-four readers with dyslexia in Grades 5 and 6 were compared with 54 chronological age-matched (CA) typical readers on the following measures of cognitive-linguistic and literacy skills: morphological awareness, phonological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, vocabulary knowledge, verbal short-term memory (STM), Chinese word reading, and dictation (or spelling). The results indicated that early adolescent readers with dyslexia performed less well than the typical readers on all cognitive-linguistic and literacy measures except the phonological measures. Both groups' scores showed substantial correlations between morphological awareness and Chinese word reading and dictation. Visual-orthographic knowledge and rapid naming were also associated with dictation in early adolescent readers with and without dyslexia, respectively. Moderated multiple regression analyses further revealed that morphological awareness and rapid naming explained unique variance in word reading and dictation for the readers with dyslexia and typical readers separately after controlling readers' age and group effect. These results highlight the potential importance of morphological awareness and rapid naming in Chinese word reading and writing in Chinese early adolescents' literacy development and impairment.

This study investigated mother-child storybook telling and joint writing as predictors of early literacy among kindergartners with hearing loss. Participants were 30 Israeli kindergartners with hearing loss and their mothers. Early literacy assessments tapped children's alphabetic skills (e.g., word writing, word recognition, and letter knowledge) and linguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness, general knowledge, and receptive vocabulary). Each mother told her child the story of a wordless book and helped her child write words. Both interactions were videotaped and analyzed. Our major findings showed that maternal storybook telling correlated with linguistic skills, and maternal writing mediation correlated with basic alphabetic skills. A series of 3-step hierarchical regression analyses revealed that beyond children's age, children's degree of hearing loss, and joint writing, storybook telling predicted children's phonological awareness (22%), general knowledge (28%), and receptive vocabulary (18%). Beyond children's age, children's degree of hearing loss, and storybook telling, joint writing predicted word writing (15%), word recognition (31%), and letter knowledge (36%). Recommendations focused on encouraging parent and teacher awareness about the differential contributions of storybook telling and writing mediation to early literacy. We also advocated enhancing parents' skills for promoting children's literacy.

The relationships between language, working memory and rapid naming in children with mild to moderate hearing loss

Purpose The present cross-sectional study examined the individual role of rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term memory (VSTM), and phonological verbal fluency (PVF) along with word reading performance in predicting phonological awareness (PA). Materials and methods A total of 225 Arabic speaking children from grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 took part in this study, divided into two groups of readers: typical developing readers and dyslexic readers. The participants were tested on word and pseudoword reading, phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal short-term memory and phonological verbal fluency. Results There are different predictive patterns between the two groups. Whereas Raven and Grade contributed directly in predicting PA in typical readers, VSTM and PVF directly predicted PA in children with dyslexia. However, word reading played a dual role in the both groups as direct predictors of PA, mediating the predictive relationships between PA and the other variables. Conclusion The results suggest the potential existence of an underlying phonological representation processing ability shared between PA, phonological access (RAN and PVF), VSTM, and word reading ability.

This study investigated the role of lexical skills and executive functioning on L1 Dutch and L2 English phonological awareness in children enrolled in bilingual Dutch/English kindergarten in The Netherlands (n = 95) and monolingual Dutch kindergarten (n = 83). Participants had an average age of 5 years and 10 months and completed tasks on phonological awareness, lexical skills (vocabulary and lexical specificity), and executive functioning (sustained visual and auditory attention, behavioural self-regulation, and verbal short-term memory) in the L1 Dutch and the L2 English. Dutch phonological awareness was predicted by self-regulation and verbal short-term memory. English phonological awareness was directly predicted by Dutch phonological awareness and visual sustained attention. The results highlight the importance of executive functioning such as sustained attention, behavioural self-regulation and short-term memory in first and second language learning in kindergarten, and support cross-language transfer effects from L1 to L2 phonological awareness among bilingual learners.

Predictors of early word reading are well established. However, it is unclear if these predictors hold for readers across a range of word reading abilities. This study used quantile regression to investigate predictive relationships at different points in the distribution of word reading. Quantile regression analyses used preschool and kindergarten measures of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatised naming, sentence repetition, vocabulary and mother's education to predict first‐grade word reading. Predictors generally varied in significance across levels of word reading. Notably, rapid automatised naming was a significant unique predictor for average and good readers but not poor readers. Letter knowledge was generally a stronger unique predictor for poor and average readers than good readers. Well‐known word reading predictors varied in significance at different points along the word reading distribution. Results have implications for early identification and statistical analyses of reading‐related outcomes.What is already known about this topic Early predictors of word reading are well established, with letter knowledge, phonological awareness and rapid automatised naming identified as key predictors. These relationships are primarily investigated in average readers, or in groups of good and poor readers separated by an arbitrary cut‐off score. What this paper adds In this study, we used quantile regression to determine significant predictors of word reading across a range of word reading abilities. The quantile regression approach avoids the loss of power that can arise when creating subgroups and has none of the issues associated with the use of a single, arbitrary cut-off score to separate good and poor readers. Letter knowledge and phonological awareness were significantly predictive of word reading across the distribution of word reading abilities, whereas rapid automatised naming was significant only for good readers, and sentence recall was significant only for poor readers. Implications for theory, policy and practice Results reinforce the usefulness of measures such as letter knowledge, phonological awareness and sentence repetition in the early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities. Results also suggest that measures of rapid naming may add little unique information in differentiating between children who subsequently read in the below‐average range.