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. 2008 Jul 1;11(2):203-223.
doi: 10.1017/S1366728908003386.

Age of first bilingual language exposure as a new window into bilingual reading development

Ioulia Kovelman  1 , Stephanie A Baker, Laura-Ann Petitto
Affiliations

Age of first bilingual language exposure as a new window into bilingual reading development

Ioulia Kovelman et al. Biling (Camb Engl). .

Abstract

How does age of first bilingual language exposure affect reading development in children learning to read in both of their languages? Is there a reading advantage for monolingual English children who are educated in bilingual schools? We studied children (grades 2-3, ages 7-9) in bilingual Spanish-English schools who were either from Spanish-speaking homes (new to English) or English-speaking homes (new to Spanish), as compared with English-speaking children in monolingual English schools. An early age of first bilingual language exposure had a positive effect on reading, phonological awareness, and language competence in both languages: early bilinguals (age of first exposure 0-3 years) outperformed other bilingual groups (age of first exposure 3-6 years). Remarkably, schooling in two languages afforded children from monolingual English homes an advantage in phoneme awareness skills. Early bilingual exposure is best for dual language reading development, and it may afford such a powerful positive impact on reading and language development that it may possibly ameliorate the negative effect of low SES on literacy. Further, age of first bilingual exposure provides a new tool for evaluating whether a young bilingual has a reading problem versus whether he or she is a typically-developing dual-language learner.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Language Competence/Expressive Proficiency Task. Sample frames/events from the cartoon.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) In English, group (iv) performed the same as group (i) and better than groups (ii–iii) on phoneme awareness, reading and language tasks; (b) in Spanish, groups (i) and (ii) performed the same and better than group (iv) on reading and language tasks; all groups performed equally high on Spanish phoneme awareness (p < 0.01).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Bilingual school students from monolingual English-speaking homes, high SES, significantly outperformed matched monolingual school students, also high SES, on a challenging phoneme awareness task (p < 0.01).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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