Biscriptuality as a Bridge to Biliteracy: The Development of Scriptual Skills in Reading and Writing in Russian as a Heritage Language in Germany

Abstract

Due to the specific context of language acquisition and language learning within a migration situation, students may have only restricted opportunities to acquire literacy (reading and writing) in their heritage language in institutional settings. Therefore, in migration contexts, students’ literacy skills in different languages may follow different developmental paths resulting in various levels of reading and writing skills. While previous research has shown that the exposure to different scripts in biscriptual bilinguals may contribute to the heterogeneity of writing skills in a heritage language, the role of scriptual skills in constituting complex literacy profiles of both reading and writing remains to be clarified. Utilising Latent Transition Analysis, the present study investigates students’ profiles of scriptual skills in reading and writing and the patterns of change within the profiles occurring over time. This study draws on the data of the German panel study “Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective” (MEZ). Overall, it analyzes the development of scriptual skills in Russian as a heritage language of 131 German-Russian bilinguals from the two cohorts (grade 7 and grade 9) over three waves. The results reveal different developmental patterns for scriptual skills in reading and writing of biscriptual bilinguals and suggest that the use of the Latin script may serve as the bridge to biscriptuality. Furthermore, the findings highlight the role of heritage language classes in the development of scriptual skills.