Abstract
The study explores whether foundational skills of reading and spelling in preschool (age 5–6) predict literacy skills cross-linguistically in an additional language in Grade 1 (age 6–7). A sample of linguistically diverse preschool children completed tasks of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, verbal-short term memory, rapid automatized naming, and lexical knowledge in the language of preschool instruction Luxembourgish. The children were followed-up in Grade 1 where literacy skills were assessed in the language of schooling, i.e., German, after five months of literacy instruction. German was a non-native language for all children. Longitudinal correlations confirm that individual differences in single word/pseudoword reading and spelling in German in Grade 1 can be predicted by all the foundational literacy skills that were assessed in Luxembourgish. Path analyses showed that phonological awareness in Luxembourgish emerged as the strongest unique predictor of Grade 1 literacy skills in German. The second unique preschool predictor of Grade 1 literacy skills was letter-sound knowledge. Results are consistent with the view that literacy development in an additional language builds upon similar building blocks as literacy acquisition in a first language, at least for languages that are typologically close. However, current findings suggest that respective contributions between predictors and literacy skills in children learning to read in an additional language may vary from patterns observed in studies with children acquiring literacy in their first language.
Highlights
Extensive research has explored the importance of proximal skills underlying literacy acquisition in monolingual settings (Caravolas et al, 2012, 2019; Georgiou et al, 2012; Landerl et al, 2019; Melby-Lervåg et al, 2012; Muter et al, 2004)
Findings suggest that literacy skills in Grade 1 in German can be predicted by phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge (LSK), verbal-short term memory, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and lexical knowledge in Luxembourgish in preschool
On average children knew approximately ten letters at the end of preschool even without formal explicit teaching of letter-sounds. This could be a consequence of the implicit teaching of foundational literacy skills in the preschool setting (MENFP, 2011), or LSK assessed before the formal introduction to literacy could reflect a proxy for the literacy environment at home
Summary
Extensive research has explored the importance of proximal skills underlying literacy acquisition in monolingual settings (Caravolas et al, 2012, 2019; Georgiou et al, 2012; Landerl et al, 2019; Melby-Lervåg et al, 2012; Muter et al, 2004). Most studies exploring emergent literacy skills in second language learners have, been conducted in contexts in which the language of literacy instruction is the majority language of the country, e.g., Spanish-speaking language-minority children learning to read in English in the United States (Lonigan et al, 2013), or Turkish-speaking language-minority children learning to read in German in Germany (Limbird et al, 2014). We aim to extend the scope of research on second language acquisition by exploring literacy development in a context in which the language of reading instruction is not the main language spoken in the country. Luxembourgish and French are the main languages used for spoken communication in Luxembourg and German is an additional language for 98% of the children in Luxembourg’s public schools (Gilles, 2020; MENFP, 2017). The term additional language is used here to refer to children who acquire literacy in another language than their first language(s), often referred to as second language (L2) learners of that language
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