Bilingualism and phonological segmentation of speech: The case of English-French pre-schoolers

Abstract

From studies of bilingual education practices, some authors have suggested that bilingualism, in a favourable environment, facilitates development of metaphonological abilities. In a monolingual context, these abilities develop in interaction with literacy. The objective of the present study is to determine if bilingual children have some metaphonological knowledge before learning to read. In other terms, does bilingualism improve metaphonological abilities? To answer this question, 50 prereaders were tested: 30 of them were monolingual French speakers; 20 were bilingual English-French speakers from a traditional French school. To test phonological abilities, two tasks were set: a free phonological segmentation task and a phonemic deletion task. Bilingual prereaders did not show better performance at the tasks but did show a different way of segmenting items. The results are discussed in the framework of phonological development theories and bilingual education.