Bilingual Phonological Awareness Research Articles

Bilingual phonological awareness as a function of language proficiency

Aims and objectives: The present study examined whether phonological awareness reflects a stable construct or whether it varies by the different languages of bilingual speakers. In particular, the study tests to what extent language proficiency determines phonological awareness above and beyond language structural characteristics. Methodology: Bilingual adult speakers were tested as they afford within-participant comparisons to address this issue. Specifically, 29 Hebrew (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals were compared to 33 English (L1)-Hebrew (L2) bilinguals on a timed auditory rhyme judgment task including 270 word-pairs (90 English pairs, 90 Hebrew pairs, and 90 pseudo-Hebrew pairs). Data and analysis: Reaction times and dʹ on the rhyme judgment task were compared between the two bilingual groups to examine the role of language proficiency in predicting phonological awareness performance. Furthermore, rhyme judgments on Hebrew pairs were correlated with those on English pairs to provide within-participant index of phonological awareness stability. Findings: Rhyme judgment performance on the same set of words was affected by the strength of linguistic representations, as determined by language proficiency profile. English-Hebrew bilinguals performed better on English pairs, whereas Hebrew-English bilinguals performed better on Hebrew pairs. Moreover, within-group comparisons revealed that performance in the more proficient language was not correlated with performance in the less proficient language. Originality: By testing two groups of bilinguals who differ in their language dominance profile using the same set of materials (including both L1 and L2 pairs), the results reveal differences in phonological awareness abilities as a function of language proficiency that cannot be reduced to structural differences between the examined languages. Significance: The findings underscore the dynamic nature of phonological awareness abilities and carry implications for clinical diagnosis of bilingual populations, in that rhyme judgment performance in one language should not be taken to index expected abilities in the other language of bilingual speakers.

Exploring the Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, and Vocabulary Among Chinese-English Bilingual Children: The Moderating Role of Second Language Instruction.

This study investigated the associations among bilingual phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary by focusing on their genetic and environmental etiologies. It also explored the influence of family socio-economic status (SES) and language exposure amount on the genetic and environmental effects. A twin study was conducted with 349 pairs of Chinese-English bilingual twins (mean age = 7.37years). Cross-language transfer was found in phonological and morphological awareness but not in vocabulary knowledge. A common genetic overlap was found among these bilingual abilities. We also found a common shared environmental effect that may account for the cross-language transfer in phonological awareness and the associations among English abilities. SES and language exposure were significant environmental influences on bilingual phonological awareness and English vocabulary. More teaching in Chinese was related to a stronger genetic effect on Chinese morphological awareness, whereas more teaching in English was related to a stronger environmental impact on English abilities.

Bilingual Phonological Awareness: Construct Validation in Grade 1 Spanish-Speaking English Learners.

This study investigated the dimensionality of bilingual phonological awareness (PA) in English and Spanish by replicating a kindergarten model in Grade 1, and presents alternatives to modeling clustered data. English and Spanish tasks were analyzed from previously collected samples totaling 1,586 first grade Spanish-speaking English learners. Four distinct approaches to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models were examined: (a) uncentered student-level data, (b) student-level data centered at the classroom means, (c) classroom-level data, and (d) multilevel CFA. Results indicated that while the multilevel CFA provided the most comprehensive view of the data, the multi-level student-level estimates were not appreciably different from estimates based on student-level data centered at the classroom means, and multi-level classroom-level estimates were comparable to estimates based on the analysis of classroom means. Importantly, English and Spanish PA were statistically separable at the student-level, but minimally distinct (r=.86) and slightly less correlated than what has been reported for kindergarten (r=.93). At the classroom level, the correlation was moderate (r=.51), and substantially reduced compared to kindergarten (r=.83). The distinction at the classroom-level between kindergarten and Grade 1 implies that instruction differentiates the abilities across languages at the classroom-level, but less so at the student-level.

A Systematic Review of Phonological Awareness Interventions for Latino Children in Early and Primary Grades

This article summarizes the findings of a systematic review of 15 group and two single-subject experimental design studies that evaluated the effectiveness of phonological awareness interventions for dual language learners (DLL) in preschool through second grade. Studies were evaluated using a Consumer Reports-like rating system. Each study was rated on quality indicators for design characteristics, measurement and reliability, evaluation of treatment effects, and external validity. The effects of phonological awareness interventions for Latino children who are DLL in the early and primary grades are promising, although the studies’ results are tempered by conceptual limitations. Most studies demonstrated acceptable design characteristics and implementation fidelity. Few studies included measures of social validity and consumer satisfaction. Although the review did not identify a single treatment approach to be superior, preliminary evidence suggests that children can benefit from phonological awareness instruction that is explicit and allows for multiple response opportunities. The results of this review also indicate that children who are DLL benefit from bilingual phonological awareness instruction without detracting them from acquiring English phonological awareness skills.

Bilingual phonological awareness: Reexamining the evidence for relations within and across languages.

There is increasing interest in the role of phonological awareness across languages. Research is uncovering cross-language effects of phonological awareness upon English reading, even from nonalphabetic languages. However, little of this research has focused on examining the extent to which multiple measures of phonological awareness indicate a single construct within or across languages. This article updates 2 recent reviews of the literature by fitting rival a priori models of multiple measures in order to test within-language and across-language structure among multiple phonological awareness tasks. Although the number and types of languages covered were quite limited, the results demonstrate high cross-language correlations, suggesting that measurement error has attenuated prior estimates of the cross-language correlation of phonological tasks. The current results suggest that in alphabetic languages, there is empirical support for phonological awareness as a unitary ability within English and other languages. In Korean and in Spanish, phonological awareness may operate as a language-general construct. In Cantonese and Mandarin, the results were less clear. The results also highlight the limitations of the current research base and important areas for future investigation.

The effect of dialect experience on Chinese children’s Mandarin phonological awareness

Most studies on bilingual phonological awareness suggested that children who were able to speak a second language performed better in phonological awareness tasks; some studies however found different results. This study revisited the issue by investigating the effect of Min dialect experience on Chinese children’s Mandarin phonological awareness. Children who were able to speak Mandarin only (M) were compared with children who were able to speak one dialect and Mandarin (DM) or two dialects and Mandarin (BiDM). In Experiment 1, 2nd and 4th grade M children performed better than their Minnan DM and Puxian DM counterparts in onset and rime judgement. Experiment 2 detected also an advantage of 1st and 2nd grade M children over their Mindong DM peers in syllable deletion and rime oddity. In Experiment 3, M children performed significantly better than their Mindong DM and Mindong–Puxian BiDM peers in 1st and 2nd grade and the difference remained significant between M children and BiDM children when IQ was controlled. The M advantage disappeared however in higher grades in all experiments. Generally the results suggested that Min dialect experience interfered with children’s performance in Mandarin phonological awareness, but the disadvantage disappeared as children proceeded to higher grades. The interference was discussed as consequence of subtractive bilingualism and Mandarin as cognitive tool.

Meta-analysis of bilingual phonological awareness: Language, age, and psycholinguistic grain size.

There is increasing interest in the role of phonological awareness across languages. However, the role of phonological awareness in various languages may differ by features of the languages as well as by features of the speakers. The current meta-analysis catalogs these relations and examines factors that may have influenced how closely related these measures are between English and other languages. Studies were selected reporting cross-language correlations with English phonological measures involving children in preschool to upper elementary (ages 4-10 years). A random effects model of 101 correlations within 38 studies suggested that the cross-language correlation of phonological tasks is influenced heavily by the language used and to some extent by the linguistic grain size of the tasks used. Although no strong effect of age was found, variability across studies was significant, reflecting unexplained differences likely due to features unable to be modeled in the current sample. The present study suggests limitations in the current research base for drawing cross-language inferences.

Bilingual PA and its influence on biliteracy for Korean English as a foreign language learners

This study examines the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) in the two languages of Korean English as a foreign language learning children in relation to L1 characteristics and school experiences, and its predictive role in word decoding skills in each language. Seventy-two 5–6-year-old Korean children who had attended English-medium preschools and kindergartens for at least 18 months were tested on a range of PA and emergent literacy skill measures in both Korean (L1) and English (L2). The findings indicate that the phonological representations of the participants reflect more of the L1, rather than school language, characteristics. In addition, L1 PA, syllable and phoneme awareness in particular, was predictive of L2 decoding abilities after accounting for L2 PA and emergent literacy skills. The results are discussed in terms of language-specific L1 phonological and orthographic characteristics, as well as their L2-learning contexts.

Development of Bilingual Phonological Awareness in Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: The Roles of Vocabulary, Letter Knowledge, and Prior Phonological Awareness

Theories concerning the development of phonological awareness place special emphasis on lexical and orthographic knowledge. Given the large degree of variability in preschool classrooms that house Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL), this study controlled for classroom effects by removing classroom means and covariances based on 158 children from 40 classrooms. Path analyses of the child-level covariance matrices tested the extent to which vocabulary and letter knowledge in each language predicted growth in English and Spanish phonological awareness of 130 preschool-age, Spanish-speaking ELLs. Results supported cross-linguistic effects of prior phonological awareness and Spanish vocabulary in the development of bilingual phonological awareness. Implications for theory, instruction, and research methods are discussed.

Bilingual education & bilingualism

Bilingual education & bilingualism

Bilingual phonological awareness: Multilevel construct validation among Spanish-speaking kindergarteners in transitional bilingual education classrooms.

The construct validity of English and Spanish phonological awareness (PA) tasks was examined with a sample of 812 kindergarten children from 71 transitional bilingual education program classrooms located in 3 different types of geographic regions in California and Texas. Tasks of PA, including blending nonwords, segmenting words, and phoneme elision, were measured in Spanish and in English and analyzed via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis at the task level. Results showed that the PA tasks defined a unitary construct at both the student and classroom levels in each language. English and Spanish PA factors were related to each other (.93 and .83 at the student and classroom levels, respectively) as well as to word reading, both within languages (correlations estimated between .74 and .93) and across languages (correlations estimated between .47 and .79). Although the PA constructs were statistically separable in each language, the high correlation between Spanish and English PA indicates considerable overlap in these abilities.

Phonological awareness in Panjabi/English children with phonological difficulties

This paper reports the performance on phonological awareness tasks across both languages of four children, bilingual in Panjabi and English; three of whom have phonological difficulties and the fourth who does not. The child without difficulties accesses, retrieves and manipulates phonological represen tations across both languages, but not at ceiling level, despite being 6 years of age. The other children show difficulties in distinct ways, throwing more light on the nature of their phonological development, with implications for therapy intervention. Links between their phonological difficulties and literacy development in English are established. A wider study on bilingual phono logical awareness is recommended.