Early bilingual reading: Recent research trends

Abstract

Abstract The problem of the feasibility and advisability of teaching reading in two languages simultaneously at pre‐school age has recently become an important and fascinating issue for psychologists and educators. Studying the factors underlying the process of early bilingual reading has attracted the interest of students of child bilingualism and bilingual education, developmental psychologists and psycholinguists, educators of bilingual children and of migrant workers’ children. There is growing support for the view that positive effects can come from early reading and early bilingual literacy for intellectual growth and general education. It is increasingly believed that the benefits found to be present in a score of cases recorded by a few attentive authors can be generalised to larger populations of bilingual children at pre‐school and elementary school age. However, anecdotal experience needs boosting by well‐grounded experimental research. It is the purpose of this article to review the literature...