BIRD

Bilingualism Impact on Reading Development

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'With the European Union, a growing group of children learns how to read in two languages at the same time. Interestingly, the Basque language is used in Spanish and French regions of Europe and many children must learn to read in Basque in parallel to either an opaque (French) or a shallow (Spanish) orthography. This project investigates the foundations of bilingual reading acquisition, taking into account the features of the languages learned. It has been shown that the chunk size of letter strings processing depends on grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules’ regularity, defining the extent to which decoding and lexical reading strategies are taxed. Few studies have focused on bilingualism impact on reading strategies and disorders. Yet, reading difficulties occur also in bilinguals and adapted diagnostic and remediation tools for this population are needed. Performance of Basque-Spanish and Basque-French bilinguals attending Basque-medium schools in Grade 2 and Grade 5 will be assessed on Basque reading, related cognitive skills and their electrophysiological markers. Taking into account the transparency of the second language learned, the present study aims at identifying differences in developmental time course of reading acquisition and in manifestations of reading disorders in Basque. Because the tests given will be identical for the two bilingual groups, i.e., in Basque, data will bring evidence missing in previous cross-linguistic studies to identify cognitive predictors and cerebral markers of normal and impaired reading acquisition in regular and irregular orthographies. Such cross-sectional study will enable to determine to what extent linguistic features positively or negatively impact on reading development. Importantly, the study will have concrete outcomes such as normative data to assess literacy in Basque, offering the opportunity to design adapted diagnostic and remediation tools for Basque literacy disorders in French and Spanish regions of Europe.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Some children being taught to read in two languages simultaneously are struggling. An EU-funded project determined that the second language plays a key role in reading ability.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The 'Bilingualism impact on reading development' (BIRD) project set out to determine the degree to which linguistic features favourably or adversely affect reading development. The overall aim was to provide better awareness of literacy growth.

Project members tested children at bilingual primary schools in the Basque Country during a two-year period. These children were learning to read in Basque together with either French or Spanish. They were matched by age and language use and exposure measures and mainly assessed in Basque reading and cognitive skills.

Test scores revealed that the Basque-Spanish bilingual children had few problems learning to decode new words. As a result, they learnt to read in Basque quite quickly. In contrast, Basque-French bilingual children had much more difficulty learning to decode new words, therefore reading in Basque came more slowly.

Spanish has a very clear correspondence between letters and sounds, and the spelling of words is quite consistent. French has a more complex sound-letter correspondence and more irregularities. Readers must learn the arbitrary or unusual pronunciations of irregular words.

There was a significant difference between the two groups in their ability to distinguish and manipulate individual sounds in nonwords. Basque children learning to read in Spanish were better at using the sounds of the Basque language than their French counterparts.

However, the Basque-French second graders had much more acute visual attention span skills. These enhanced skills are a result of the French language's less direct correspondence between letters and sounds. By grade five, the difference did not exist. This may indicate that older children in both language groups display similar whole-word strategies and have built up lexical knowledge.

Ongoing work in BIRD will lead to the design of diagnostic tools for literacy delays and disorders. The project should facilitate future literacy acquisition programs in European bilingual communities such as Brittany, Catalonia, Galicia and Wales.